• Catamitism

    Pronunciation

    • RP enPR: kăʹtÉ™mÄ«tÄ­zm, IPA: /ˈkætÉ™maɪtɪzm/

    Origin

    catamite + -ism

    Full definition of catamitism

    Noun

    catamitism

    (uncountable)
    1. The practice of keeping catamites.
      • 1686: Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras and Ferrand Spence, The HiÅ¿tory of the Life and Actions of that Great Captain of his Age the ViÅ¿count de Turenne, page 312:The ViÅ¿count de Turenne…RemonÅ¿trated to Madam de Buillon, that this Prince having us’d his firÅ¿t Wife Ill, whom he had kick’d when with Child, of which Å¿he dy’d, ‛twas expoÅ¿ing her Daughter to the like treatment; that he was addicted to Wine and Women, Qualities not only unworthy a PerÅ¿on of his Rank, but allÅ¿o to a little CatamitiÅ¿m…
      • 1973: Roy Temple House and Ernst Erich Noth, Books Abroad, volume 47, issue 3, page 574:Exhibitionists do not like to confess their venial sins — catamitism and group sex, yes, petty avarice and pettier maliciousness, no: the latter faults do not make for salable reading.
      • 1989: The Scriblerian and the Kit-Cats, volume 22, page 136:In Satire 4, Persius attacked Nero’s “depilation and heterosexual” lust; Dryden substituted homosexuality, catamitism, and impotency, alluding to William’s rumored sexual liaisons with his Dutch favorites.
      • 1996: Jacqueline Long, Claudian’s In Eutropium: Or, How, When, and Why to Slander a Eunuch, page 80:Libanius’s invective against Philip successively despises barbarian origins in and of themselves, mocks dependency, rebukes failure to learn cultural values, snidely notes catamitism, drowns practical achievements in the immorality alleged to have won them, and further damns character with accounts of unproductive vice.
      • 2005: Leofranc Holford-Strevens, Aulus Gellius: An Antonine Scholar and His Achievement, page 207:Caelius will never take the allegation of catamitism in his youth so hard…that is silly, for we cannot repent of things like good looks that are not of our causation.
    2. (philosophy, rare) The essence of being a catamite.
      • 1994: Michael Ryan, “Foucault’s Fallacy” in Reconstructing Foucault: Essays in the Wake of the 80s, page 175:Effeminacy…may not have been the quality that gave catamitism its meaning; rather, catamitism…may have been the normative danger that qualified effeminacy as a threat to male heterosexual rule.
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