“Mansplain” made its way into the Urban Dictionary in 2009. In 2010, “mansplainer” was a New York Times Word of the Year. In 2014, Salon declared the word dead (the true sign of making it); the Oxford Dictionaries added “mansplain” as an entry; and the Macquarie Dictionary named it Word of the Year.
At its most basic, “mansplaining” refers to — as a 2015 Merriam-Webster “Words We’re Watching” column put it — “what occurs when a man talks condescendingly to someone (especially a woman) about something he has incomplete knowledge of, with the mistaken assumption that he knows more about it than the person he’s talking to does.”
Although the term “mansplaining” originated in the United States, the practice may very well be universal — and in fact, the term has already moved abroad. In 2015, the Swedish Language Council welcomed “mansplaining” to its list of new Swedish words. Iceland made its own variant (“hrútskýring,” or “ramsplaining”) the 2016 Word of the Year — and named a beer after it. In Greek, Japanese, Portuguese, Swedish, and many other languages, the English “mansplaining” just gets dropped into the conversation, and folks nod.
This list was crowdsourced among friends, writers, and scholars, who reached out to their own friends and families around the world to collect the words on everybody’s lips — and even to coin a few. Like the original term, new words for “mansplaining” get invented on the fly, sometimes in a single, offhand tweet. From that point of origin, they go viral on social media, or get adopted by a national tourist board, and finally make their way into lexicons.
Comments about this article
Németország
Local time: 04:40
angol - német
My mother does it all the time, too.
Local time: 04:40
cseh - francia
+ ...
but typically men do that. My husband has very little education, but he will pick up something he heard somewhere (even if it's complete nonsense) and hammer it to me.
Local time: 22:40
angol - spanyol
+ ...
My mother does it all the time, too.
Hahahahah, Ricki! You win the Internet today!
Local time: 22:40
angol - spanyol
+ ...
but typically men do that. My husband has very little education, but he will pick up something he heard somewhere (even if it's complete nonsense) and hammer it to me.
This reminds me the “People are…” statements I hear or read, simple generalizations about the other we don't like but which reflect a truth about ourselves.
For example, if I'm driving down the road and someone gets in front of me without signaling, I would tend to say “[some] people don't know how to change lanes!” all huffy and puffy. In reality, I sometimes do the same thing. Amazing!
Same with this feel-good, it's-someone-else's-fault neologism, mansplaining, to project our frustrations onto the opposite gender (or sex) when we (some women, not all) feel talked down, interrupted, condescended or otherwise rolled over by some unfounded, silly or unsupported explanation or jabbering.
😇 🤓
Full disclosure: I'm a man, so you could say I'm “mansplaining” my point. 😅
Belgium
Local time: 04:40
angol - olasz
+ ...
If one pays more attention, "mansPLAINing" actually means "man being so plain (insignificant) that needs to validate his unsolicited opinion shutting up a woman more competent than him".
Spanyolország
Tag (2014 óta)
angol - spanyol
+ ...
Research showed that...
Well, that one has no gender; both men and women use it. Most of the time there is no research at all.
Spanyolország
Local time: 04:40
spanyol - angol
+ ...
How one woman (and two men, admittedly) deal with it when it happens
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcAqR-Hs9II
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