Mind & EmotionGreek → English
Androgyny
/ænˈdrɒdʒəni/noun
The combination of masculine and feminine characteristics in one person or form.
The Greek roots
ἀνήρ
anḗr
man, male
γυνή
gynḗ
woman, female
Literally: “man-woman”
The story of the word
Plato's Aristophanes uses ἀνδρόγυνον in the Symposium for the original double-bodied humans that Zeus sliced in half. English took the word into botany and anatomy first, for flowers and bodies with both sets of parts. Sandra Bem pulled it into psychology in 1974 with a scale that treated masculine and feminine traits as two separate axes rather than opposite ends of one line.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → French → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
Same family
androidpolyandrygynaecologymisogyny
In a sentence
The costume designer aimed for a deliberate androgyny that made the character hard to place.
Bem argued that androgyny predicted better adjustment than either extreme.