English

Alternative forms

• womanise (non-Oxford British spelling)

Verb

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

1. (intransitive, said of a man) To flirt with and/or seduce, or attempt to seduce, women, especially lecherously.
2. (transitive, usually figuratively) To turn into a woman; to feminize.
   • a. 1590, Phillip Sidney, The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia:

     And herein do these kinds of loves imitate the excellent; for as the love of heaven makes one heavenly, the love of virtue virtuous, so doth the love of the world make one become worldly; and this effeminate love of a woman doth so womanize a man that, if he yield to it, will not only make him an Amazon, but a launder, a distaff, a spinner, or whatsoever other vile occupation their idle heads can imagine and their weak hands perform.

   • 2000, Randy Lee Eickhoff, The sorrows, 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, 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:

     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

• womanizer, womaniser