Drinkin that
misogynist
(miss OJ in ist) Dating back to the early seventeenth century, this noun means “woman-hater.”
misandrist
(miss AND rist) Here’s the other side of the coin from misogynist—in short, a man-hater.
ruse
(ROOSE or ROOZE) From the Middle English word for “detour,” this noun means “a crafty scheme,” “a sneaky plan.”
subterfuge
(SUB ter fuje) The Latin root of this noun means “to escape secretly,” but the word, like ruse, has come to mean “any secret plan or strategy.”
internecine
(inter NES en or inter NEES en) This adjective has come to mean intra-group struggle or destruction. (Should you see it in literature earlier than the late eighteenth century, it will lack that “internal” sense. A famous seventeenth-century poem uses “intestinal” to describe civil war.)
shrew
(shroo) Although this noun applied to both men and women as far back as the thirteenth century and meant “spiteful person,” it has since come to mean “a peevish, spiteful, nagging woman.” The word comes from the Old English for a “shrew mouse,” which was once believed to have a venomous bite.
harridan
(HARR ih den) Here’s another anti-woman noun that dates back at least as far as 1700. It means a “vicious, scolding old woman” and may come from the Old French word for “old horse” or “nag.”
guile
(rhymes with STYLE) This noun means “skillful cunning” or “deceit” and comes from the Old English word for “sorcery.” “To beguile,” a related verb, comes a bit closer to the word’s original roots; though it also means “to deceive,” it often suggests a kind of cunning that is more charming than treacherous. People have guile or beguile, not plans or objects.
furtive
(FUR tive) This adjective means “sneaky” or “shifty” and comes from the Latin word for “thief.” It can describe a person or, more often, the way a person acts.
hegemony
(huh JEM uh nee) Many wars are fought over power, what state will have hegemony over another. This noun, which became very trendy in the late twentieth century, means just that: predominant influence of one nation over another. The origin is the Greek word for “leader.”
chauvinist
(SHOW vin ist) This noun has two meanings. First, it describes anyone who is fanatically patriotic. It also means someone with a prejudiced belief in the superiority of his or her own gender or group, and it is mostly commonly applied to males.
fishwife
This noun can mean literally “a woman who sells fish,” but it more generally means “a course, abusive, nagging woman.”
clandestine
(clan DES tin) Probably formed from the Latin for “internal secret,” this adjective is used to describe something done secretly in order to conceal a private plan or an improper purpose. People aren’t clandestine; actions are.
temporize
(TEMP er ize) From the Latin for “to pass one’s time,” this verb has a slightly more sinister quality. It means “to act evasively in order to gain time or to avoid an argument.”
ordnance
(ORD nunce) This noun refers to items as dissimilar as weapons, ammunition, vehicles—whatever is needed to keep the military going. Do not confuse it with ordinance; this word sounds similar but has the entirely different meaning of a city regulation.
misanthrope
(MISS an THROPE) Here’s one of the few nouns on the list that’s not gender-specific. Anyone can be a misanthrope since it means “one who hates or mistrusts human kind.”
philanderer
(fil AND der er) This noun describes a male flirt, that is, a man who carries on many love affairs with women that he does not take seriously. Most philanderers engage in extramarital affairs with women they have no intention of marrying. The word actually comes from the Greek for “lover of men.” The adjective form is “philandering.”
surreptitious
(SUR rep TISH us) This adjective means clandestine or stealthy, in short—sneaky. Just like “clandestine,” it is more often used to describe the actions people do, not the character of the people who do them. The noun form is “surreptitiousness,” but it’s never used.
martial
(MAR shul) Mars, the Roman god of war, left his mark on this adjective. Unsurprisingly, it means “related to or characteristic of war or warriors.”
ballistic
(buh LIST ik) This word’s formal meaning refers to the dynamics of projectiles; the ancestry goes back to the Greek word “to throw”—think “throw a ball.” This word is best known today in its slang meaning of really really angry—angry enough to throw something.
crone
(rhymes with MOAN) We’re back to misogyny (see #2) with this noun. It means a “cantankerous, old, withered woman” and comes from the Old French word for “carrion,” or dead and decaying flesh.
hag
This word is actually an abbreviation of haegtesse, an Old English word that means “witch” or “hag.” The noun is reserved solely for women and, although it once meant “soothsayer” or “oracle,” it has since retained only the negative meaning of “witch” or “frightful, ugly old woman.”
innuendo
(in you END o) This noun may or may not qualify as “deception.” From the Latin for “hint” or “give a nod to,” it means “a subtle or indirect expression” or “an insinuation.” If it’s true, of course, it doesn’t qualify as deception, but all too often it suggests the kind of half-truth that leads to rumor or gossip. In fact, in a legal sense, it means “allegedly libelous or slanderous material.”
carnage
(KAR nej) This noun refers to the slaughter inevitable in any war. The root word is the Latin for “flesh.”
subjugate
(SUB ju gate) This verb expresses the action of conquering, enslaving. The Latin root word comes from the yoke that subdues animals.