homophobia
English
Pronunciation
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˌhəʊ.məˈfəʊ.bi.ə/, /ˌhɒ.mə-/
- (General American) IPA(key): /ˌhoʊ.məˈfoʊ.bi.ə/
Audio (Southern England): (file) - Rhymes: -əʊbiə
- Hyphenation: ho‧mo‧pho‧bia
Etymology 1
From homo- (short for and prefix of homosexual) + -phobia. Coined by American psychologist George Weinberg in 1971 in Society and the Healthy Homosexual.
Noun
homophobia (countable and uncountable, plural homophobias)
- (strictly) Hatred, fear, aversion, or prejudice towards homosexuals. [from 1971]
- Synonyms: gay-hate, gaycism, gayphobia, heterosexism, homoerotophobia, homomisia, homophobism
- Antonym: homomania
- Hypernyms: see Thesaurus:prejudice
- Hyponyms: gayphobia, lesbophobia, dykephobia
- 2005, Bill Clinton, My Life[3], volume II, New York: Vintage Books, →ISBN, →OCLC, pages 45–46:
- He lost his racism when he worked with a black man in Chicago. He lost his homophobia when he was befriended and looked after by his gay neighbors, a doctor and a nurse, in Little Rock.
- 2025 June 20, Nick Levine, “'In every theatre, people would leave': How 'gay cowboy movie' Brokeback Mountain challenged Hollywood – and the US”, in BBC[4]:
- Thinly-veiled homophobia – this time in early-2000s Hollywood – made Brokeback Mountain an immense challenge for Ossana and her fellow producer James Schamus.
- (by extension, loosely) Hatred, fear, aversion, or prejudice towards LGBT+ persons in general.
- Synonyms: LGBTphobia, LGBTQphobia
- Hyponyms: acephobia, biphobia, transphobia
- (Internet slang, humorous) Deliberate misspelling of heterochromia. [from 2021]
- A beautiful cat with homophobia in her 💙 eyes 🧡
- 2025 August 2, anonymous author, /vg/ - Video Game Generals[8], 4chan, archived from the original on 7 August 2025:
- beautiful rabbit with homophobia
Usage notes
- In the 1990s, behavioral scientists William O'Donohue and Christine Caselles argued that the term homophobia was pejorative.[1] In 2012, the Associated Press Stylebook was revised to advise against using -phobia words in non-clinical ways, and AP editor Dave Minthorn suggested replacing "homophobic" with "anti-gay".[2][3]
Derived terms
Related terms
Translations
fear, dislike, or hate of homosexuals
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See also
Further reading
- homophobia on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
Etymology 2
Latin homo (“man”) + -phobia (“fear”)
Noun
homophobia (uncountable)
- (obsolete) A pathological fear of mankind.
- Synonym: anthropophobia
Related terms
Translations
pathological fear of mankind
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See also
References
- ^ O'Donohue, William; Caselles, Christine (September 1993), “Homophobia: Conceptual, definitional, and value issues”, in Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment[1], volume 15, number 3, archived from the original on 28 March 2020
- ^ Byers, Dylan (26 December 2012), “AP nixes 'homophobia', 'ethnic cleansing'”, in Politico, retrieved 12 January 2018
- ^ Page, Clarence (5 December 2012), “Words with negative power”, in Chicago Tribune[2], retrieved 16 December 2012
Further reading
- “homophobia”, in Cambridge English Dictionary, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 1999–present.
- “homophobia”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
- “homophobia”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
- “homophobia”, in OED Online , Oxford: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.
- “Beautiful Cat with Homophobia”, in Know Your Meme, website launched 2007