Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Fear, hatred, or mistrust of lesbians and gay men.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A strong dislike or fear of homosexuals, especially to an unreasonable degree.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Fear, dislike, or hate of homosexuals.
  • noun obsolete, individual occurrences A pathological fear of mankind.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun prejudice against (fear or dislike of) homosexual people and homosexuality

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[homo(sexual) + –phobia.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

homo (from homosexual) +‎ -phobia, coined in 1971 by George Weinberg in Society and the Healthy Homosexual.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Latin homo ("man") + phobia ("fear")

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Examples

Comments

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  • From Camille Paglia, "Crisis in The American Universities."

    Let me go on. I have a whole list here of reforms. I'm going to sound like Martin Luther! A couple of things. The abuse of language has got to stop. Throwing around words like racist and homophobic and so on. Now, homophobic has a specific psychological meaning. It means someone who's obsessed with homosexuality, so that you go out and maybe kill or maim someone who is homosexual because of your own inner fear that you may be having homosexual impulses. It's a true phobia. We cannot allow the word homophobic to be constantly used for anyone who says, "I don't like gay people" or "I think homosexuality is immoral, according to the Bible." We cannot be misusing this word.

    December 12, 2006

  • The big fat gay collab!

    Don't miss the French version, perhaps even better.

    May 27, 2009

  • Ha! Pro, that needs a NSFW label!

    May 27, 2009

  • This 'definition' for homophobia is incorrect. Phobia means fear, not hate or mistrust.

    The second 'definition' includes the qualifier 'to an unreasonable degree'. This is a foolish definition, as there is no reference for what is reasonable. The object of this slander shall argue that their opinions ARE reasonable, thus rendering the use of this term as incorrect by definition.

    "Antipathy for homosexuals" would correctly be labeled 'homoantipathia'.

    "Dislike/hatred of homosexuals" would be correctly labeled as 'homomiso'

    As this site is about words and correct definitions (not politics, presumably) the definitions ahould be correct and accurate.

    March 5, 2023