sadism
/ˈseɪdɪz(ə)m
/noun [mass noun]
The tendency to derive pleasure, especially sexual gratification, from inflicting pain, suffering, or humiliation on others: beneath the apparent loving concern she had glimpsed spite and sadism...
- They include auto-mutilation of her genitals with a razor, voyeurism, taking sexual pleasure in urination, sadism, and masochism.
- This showed that CPA was an effective agent in the treatment of very severe paraphilias, in this case sexual sadism and pedophilia that resulted in a sexually motivated homicide.
- Yet this scenario of male sadism and necrophiliac fetishism, this duality of adoration and humiliation does not feel quite right.
Synonyms
schadenfreude;
callousness, barbarity, bestiality, perversion, viciousness, brutality, cruelty, savagery, fiendishness, cold-bloodedness, inhumanity, ruthlessness, heartlessness, mercilessness, pitilessness
Origin
Late 19th century: from French sadisme, from the name of the Marquis de Sade, Comte de.
During several periods of imprisonment in the later 18th and early 19th centuries, French writer and soldier the Marquis de Sade (1740–1814) wrote pornographic books. One sexual perversion in particular fascinated him, arousal from inflicting pain on others. The French named it sadisme after him, and English adopted the word as sadism in the 1880s. See also masochism
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