effeminate

The longstanding prejudice was that falsetto was comic, effeminate or simply bizarre.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 9, 2026

He noted that Morrissey’s malaise mirrors the sentiment of many ranchera songs, also citing that his effeminate onstage persona is a perfect subversion of Mexican machismo.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 25, 2026

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

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

Annoyed by this sense of effeminate intrigue I got off the platform and lost myself in the mob, crouching and slouching somewhat to do so.

From "The Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula K. Le Guin

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

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

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

Your delicate health has always excluded you from the service; but Raoul is healthy, and it is high time to withdraw him from the effeminating effect of pampering and petting.

From Saint Michael A Romance by E. T. C. (Edward Theodore Chalmers) Werner

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

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

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

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