effeminate

As a “very, very effeminate boy” growing up in Baltimore, Ben Appel was teased mercilessly.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 31, 2025

When I was younger, bald men were often the butt of jokes - but taking steps to regain lost hair seemed to be viewed as effeminate and vain.

From BBC ● Oct. 31, 2025

“I didn’t have great hand-eye coordination. I was lanky, awkward and clumsy with effeminate mannerisms,” he says.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 20, 2023

Nationalistic right-wingers targeted such “painted and powdered” young men for persecution, but in “Brideshead Revisited” fashion, the effeminate met the parodic in the defiant aesthetes’ pursuits.

From Washington Post ● Dec. 1, 2022

But the bobcats had always scared him with their now-guttural, now-piercing and effeminate, bloodcurdling screams.

From "The Milagro Beanfield War" by John Nichols

As the monarchs became effeminated, new powers sprung up, especially Media, which ultimately completed the ruin of Assyria, under Cyaxares.

From Ancient States and Empires by John Lord

No soft luxurious diet then Had effeminated men, No other meat, nor wine had any Than the coarse mast, or simple honey, And by the parents' care laid up Cheap berries did the children sup.

From Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II by E. K. (Edmund Kerchever) Chambers

He looms up as one of the prodigies of earth—yet sent by Providence as an avenger—an instrument of punishment on those effeminated nations, or rather dynasties, which had triumphed over human misery.

From Ancient States and Empires by John Lord

Secondly, such a commonwealth must either be in peace, or war; if she be in peace, the few are soonest effeminated and corrupted and so obnoxious also to faction.

From The Commonwealth of Oceana by James Harrington

The little parlour was delightfully warm, with a dim consciousness of sleigh-furs, hack drivers in absurd winter caps, pedestrians huddling themselves and wriggling and grunting for an effeminating background to one’s sense of shelter.

From The White Terror and The Red A novel of revolutionary Russia by Abraham Cahan

We are permitted no books but such as tend to the weakening and effeminating of the mind.

From Lady Mary Wortley Montague Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) by Lewis Melville

No doubt a green apple and the buds of trees, and all kinds of sweet or peppery roots give him that wild and strenuous virtue which enables him to resist pampering and effeminating influences.

From Confessions of Boyhood by John Albee

We are permitted no books but such as tend to the weakening or effeminating of the mind.

From Woman in Science With an Introductory Chapter on Woman's Long Struggle for Things of the Mind by John Augustine Zahm

She had made herself his dearest friend without effeminating him, his constant guide without monopolizing him, and his preceptor without ceasing to be his comrade.

From Her Royal Highness Woman by Max O'Rell