eonism

noun
/ˈi.əˌnɪzəm/

Etymology

Coined in 1920 by the British physician and sexologist Havelock Ellis (1859–1939) after Chevalier d'Eon (1728–1810), a French diplomat, spy and soldier who presented as male for 49 years, then as a female for 33. Ellis had previously used the term sexo-aesthetic inversion.

  1. derived from diplomat

Definitions

  1. The pretence of being the opposite sex, especially that by a man of being a woman

    The pretence of being the opposite sex, especially that by a man of being a woman; transvestism.

    • Ellis seems, however, to regard this 'less common but more complete' type as embodying the essence of eonism, and he objected to the term transvestism because it focused attention solely on the element of cross-dressing.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for eonism. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA