unmanly
/ʌnˈmanli
/adjective
Not manly: unmanly behaviour...
- Men, he claimed, are much less likely to weep due to bodily pain since weeping is seen as a weak and unmanly behaviour.
- Micheaux uses contemporaneous notions of gender as a way of naturalizing positive and negative character qualities as manly or unmanly, womanly or unwomanly.
- Grandpa would, in essence, teach me to be afraid, to understand the humiliation that awaited me if I dared shed tears or demonstrate some other unmanly behavior.
Synonyms
effeminate, effete, unmasculine;
womanish, girlish, feminine;
weak, soft, timid, timorous, fearful, cowardly, lily-livered, limp-wristed, spineless, craven, milksoppish, pusillanimous, chicken-hearted, weak-kneed
informal sissy, wimpish, wimpy, pansy-like, queeny
Derivatives
unmanliness
- We might have managed a sort of ghostly beard apparition which would float mysteriously in front of our chins, but it was easier to be rid of it and affect disinterest, rather than admit unmanliness.
- In both The Conquest and The Homesteader, the character who exemplifies the unmanliness that impedes the progress of the Race is the protagonist's father-in-law, named McCraline in the earlier book and McCarthy in the later one.
- In Wister's world, unmanliness appears in two opposing figures, the man who cannot control his passions and the man whose life of civilized restraint has so buried those passions that he has become effeminate.