effeminacy

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Dandyism’s persistent associations with criminality, effeminacy and homosexuality would achieve notoriety in Oscar Wilde’s 1895 trials.

From The Wall Street Journal • Jan. 15, 2026

Warhol also embraced camp as a personal style, performing a theatrical effeminacy that equated to a strategic queerness designed to discomfit those among his contemporaries who held him to be "too swish."

From Salon • Feb. 19, 2022

Through his balletic gait and florid presentation, Mercury rubbed the nose of Live Aid’s global audience in a powerful brand of effeminacy, seducing them into adoring something they might otherwise view with contempt.

From New York Times • Nov. 9, 2018

“Well-meaning, intelligent straight people”: For Outward’s Radical issue, Alex Borinsky writes that there’s more to camp and swish and effeminacy than meets the eye.

From Slate • Oct. 31, 2018

"I admit, my friend, that I am an effeminate man," said Scuratoff with a gentle sigh, as though he were really reproaching himself for his effeminacy.

From The House of the Dead or Prison Life in Siberia with an introduction by Julius Bramont by Dostoyevsky, Fyodor