A.Word.A.Day --misogynoir

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Sep 2, 2024

This week’s theme
Coined words

This week’s words
misogynoir
outgrabe
intertextuality
genteelism
googolplex

Illustration: Anu Garg + AI

Previous week’s theme
Words used figuratively

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

Last year, Dan Barker, an author, speaker, and co-president of FFRF, told me about a word he had coined, contraduction, for the act of inverting reality.

As he describes it, “Have you ever been sitting in a train that’s not moving when the train next to you starts to move and you briefly think it is you who is moving? You got it backward.”

That’s contraduction.

Another example of contraduction is claiming that conditions like gravity and other constants were fine tuned for us. In reality, it’s we who evolved to fit them.

The fallacy has been around, but the word is new. It isn’t yet in the dictionary, but it fills a need, and if enough people use it, it might even find a place.

Thankfully, Dan Barker has written a compact, very readable book that offers more examples and insights. The book is out this week: Contraduction.

And that’s the secret to coining a word. Identify a concept that has been around yet doesn’t have a word to describe it. This week we’ll feature five coined words that are already in the dictionary.

Do you have examples of contraduction? Share below or email us at words@wordsmith.org (include your location: city, state).

misogynoir

PRONUNCIATION:

(muh-soj-uh-NWAR)

MEANING:

noun: Hatred or prejudice directed toward Black women.

ETYMOLOGY:

Coined by the scholar and writer Moya Bailey (b. 1983) as a blend of misogyny + French noir (black). The word misogyny is from Greek miso- (hate) + gyne (woman). Earliest documented use: 2010.

NOTES:

This term highlights the intersectional nature of the discrimination Black women face, where both racism and sexism intertwine.

USAGE:

“[Trump] spat misogynoir about Vice President Kamala Harris’s qualifications, spoke incoherently and falsely about the state of America’s major cities and airports, and praised the wife of his son, Don Jr., who is not married. No calls for him to take a mental fitness test followed.”
Kimberly Atkins Stohr; Biden and Trump Are Showing Their Stark Contrast; Boston Globe (Massachusetts); Jul 11, 2024.

“There is a long history of media misogynoir in sports. Before her retirement, Serena Williams was constantly a victim of vitriolic commentary about her looks, with one Australian cartoonist drawing a racist caricature of her and a Romanian TV host comparing Williams to a monkey.”
Janice Gassam Asare; Media Misogynoir; Forbes (New York); Apr 7, 2024.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

There are conditions of blindness so voluntary that they become complicity. -Paul Bourget, novelist (2 Sep 1852-1935)

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