misopogon

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Ancient Greek μισοπώγων (misopṓgōn, “somebody who hates beards”), which is incidentally the title of a book by Emperor Julian, from μῖσος (mîsos, “hatred”) +‎ πώγων (pṓgōn, “beard”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˌmɪsəˈpəʊɡɒn/

Noun

misopogon (plural misopogons)

1. (rare) A person with hate or contempt for beards.
   • 1873, Robert Hall Baynes, “A Plea For Beards, Clerical and Lay”, in Rev. S.C. Austen, editor, The Churchman’s shilling magazine and family treasury, volume 13:

     Some of the misopogons are quite consistent in this, and object to beards altogether on the grounds of their being unclean, ungentlemanly, un-English.

   • 1875, Charles Maurice Davies, Mystic London, London / New York: Tinsley Brothers / R. Worthington, Chapter XXII. Penny Readings, pages 172–173 / 140:

     It is true to a proverb that we English people have a knack of doing the best possible things in the worst possible way; and that not, unfrequently, when we do once begin doing them we do them to death. It takes some time to convince us that the particular thing is worth doing at all; but, once persuaded, we go in for it with all our British might and main. The beard-and-mustache movement was a case in point. Some years ago a mustache was looked upon by serious English people as decidedly reckless and dissipated. A beard was fit only for a bandit. Nowadays the mildest youth in the Young Men’s Christian Association may wear a mustache without being denounced as “carnal,” and paterfamilias revels in the beard of a sapeur, no misopogon daring to say him nay.

   • 1976, Reginald Reynolds, Beards: Their Social Standing, Religious Involvements, Decorative Possibilities, and Value Offence and Defence Through the Ages, page 193:

     It may have been invented by the Abbé Faydit, a misopogon who wished to discredit beards and used this account in an attack on Jean Savaron, one of the ablest scholars who ever defended the beard clerical.

   • 1993, Daniel Botkin, “A Bewhiskered Believer: Bewildered By Beard-Bearing Brethren.”, in The Messianic Outreach‎^[1], volume 12, number 3, pages 11–15:

     These parents wanted good role models for their children, and a fuzzy-faced principal in a Christian school did not fit their definition of a good role model. I assured the pastor that if I decided to accept the position as God’s will, I would accept shaving my beard as anecessary requirement to doing the will of God. As it turned out, I did not take the job. The reasons I turned it down had nothing to do with shaving. However, this incident, along with the fact that many Christian seminaries forbid students to have beards, got me interested in the subject of Christian misopogons—beard-haters.

   1. (figurative, literary) by extension, contempt of philosophers and associated paraphernalia (wisdom, the philosopher's beard, etc.)

Derived terms

• misopogonistically

Related terms

• pogonophobe
• beardism