Speciesism
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 An ethical stance that assigns different worth or rights to beings on the basis of their species membership, such as assigning greater rights to human beings than to other animals. uncountable
"Such is the breathtaking speciesism of our Christian-inspired attitudes, the abortion of a single human zygote (most of them are destined to be spontaneously aborted anyway) can arouse more moral solicitude and righteous indignation than the vivisection of any number of intelligent adult chimpanzees"
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"Such is the breathtaking speciesism of our Christian-inspired attitudes, the abortion of a single human zygote (most of them are destined to be spontaneously aborted anyway) can arouse more moral solicitude and righteous indignation than the vivisection of any number of intelligent adult chimpanzees"
Etymology
Coined by British animal rights advocate Richard D. Ryder in 1970 from species + -ism.
Related phrases
More for "speciesism"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.