womanize

English

Alternative forms

womanise (non-Oxford British spelling)

Etymology

From woman +‎ -ize.

Pronunciation

IPA^(key): /ˈwʊmənaɪz/
Audio (Southern England): (file)

Verb

womanize (third-person singular simple present womanizes, present participle womanizing, simple past and past participle womanized)

(intransitive, said of a man) To flirt with or seduce, or attempt to seduce, women, especially lecherously.
(transitive, usually figuratively) To turn into a woman; to feminize.
- a. 1587, Philip Sidney, “The First Booke”, in [Mary Sidney], editor, The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia […] [The New Arcadia], London: […] [John Windet] for William Ponsonbie, published 1593, →OCLC, folio 23, verso:
  [T]his effeminate loue of a wõman, doth ſo womanize a man, that (if hee yeeld to it) it will not onely make him an Amazon; but a launder, a diſtaff-ſpinner; or what ſo euer other vile occupation their idle heads can imagin and their weake hands performe.
  The original manuscript and 1590 edition have womaniſh instead.
- 2000, Randy Lee Eickhoff, The sorrows‎^[1], page 84:
  Another bolt passed between Iucharba's legs, nearly womanizing him with its blast of heat. "EEEeeeYOW!" he howled.
- 2000, Claudia V. Camp, Wise, Strange and Holy: The Strange Woman and the Making of the Bible‎^[2], page 104:
  Samson himself is a gender paradox: while the focus on his hair links him with the women he pursues, it is also the source of his masculine strength, whose loss womanizes him.
- 2008, Wendy Olmsted, The Imperfect Friend: Emotion and Rhetoric in Sidney, Milton and their Contexts‎^[3]:
  Love for a woman was believed to produce an especially dangerous kind of effeminacy. Following this line of thinking, Musidorus charges that Pyrocles' infatuation threatens to 'womanize' him

Derived terms

Translations

seduce women lecherously

Hebrew: הִתְפַּרְפֵּר (he) (hitparpér) (slang)