Nancy
name, noun, slang ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 An effeminate man, especially a homosexual. Australia, British, Ireland, New-Zealand, US, derogatory, offensive, slang
"The wonderful Stephen Tobolowsky returns as Sandy [Ryerson], the flaming former glee club director who’s now the shop teacher, and warns that “you are going to have a school full of nancys unless you get some hot wood in those teenagers’ hands.”"
- 2 Alternative letter-case form of nancy. alt-of
"HAWKER, the Australian, who is to handle the Sopwith plane, predicts that any fast steamer out of New York will have no difficulty in beating the “Nancies” of the United States Navy."
- 1 A female given name.
"I'll ne'er blame my partial fancy, Naething could resist my Nancy: But to see her was to love her; Love but her, and love forever."
- 2 A city in Meurthe-et-Moselle department, Grand Est, north-eastern France.
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"Linda was wildly excited to learn that her aunt Nancy was coming to visit her."
Etymology
From Nancy, pet form of the female given names Agnes and Anne, under influence from earlier nan (“serving girl, maid; male homosexual”), itself from Nan, another pet form of the same names. Compare Mary.
Medieval diminutive of Ann and Agnes. Compare Betsy, Patsy.
From French Nancy, from Medieval Latin Nanciacum, from Old High German Nanzig.
Related phrases
More for "nancy"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.