Sexist
adj, noun ·2 syllables ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 A person who discriminates on grounds of sex; someone who practises sexism.
"When you argue […] that since fewer women write good poetry this justifies their total exclusion, you are taking a position analogous to that of the racist—I might call you in this case a "sexist"—who says that since so few Negroes have held positions of importance relative to the majority race, their exclusion from history books is a matter of good judgement rather than discrimination. Both the racist and the sexist are acting as if all that has happened had never happened, and both of them are making decisions and coming to conclusions about someone's value by referring to factors which are in both cases irrelevant."
- 2 a man with a chauvinistic belief in the inferiority of women wordnet
- 1 Unfairly discriminatory against one sex in favour of the other.
"What was all that about? Well, like all women, she's shoe-mad. 't's a bit sexist, isn't it? Do you know one woman who isn't obsessed with shoes? No, but I only know one woman. And she just left the room shouting "THE SHOES!""
- 1 discriminatory on the basis of sex (usually said of men's attitude toward women) wordnet
Example
More examples"That's not what I meant. I'm not being sexist. Men and women are just different."
Etymology
From sex + -ist, after sexism.
Related phrases
More for "sexist"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.