Meanings
- informaluncountablevulgarLiterature which appeals to, or is marketed toward, male readers.
"I am really tired of reading about sad women and bad sex, especially in laddish terms - all that dick-lit stuff," she says dismissively.
2002 October 13, Jackie McGlone, “To hold but not to have”, in Scotland on Sunday2 more examples
She knew that he read books. Okay, so it was that trendy kind of real-life adventure-tragedy-on-Everest-in-Antarctica-in-Krakatoa-with-sharks-with-fire stuff. Sure, it was Dick Lit (a term Nina had coined in response to Chick Lit), but they were books, for god's sake, and not just the sports or business pages that many men considered "reading."
2004, Leslie Schur, The Dog Walker, Atria Books, →ISBNPeter Cameron's Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You has been touted as the current generation's Catcher in the Rye (both the Chbosky and Cameron titles provide teen dick lit alternatives to the many adolescent chick lit offerings).
2009, Malina Saval, The Secret Lives of Boys: Inside the Raw Emotional World of Male Teens, Basic Books, →ISBNSynonyms: manfiction
Synonyms & antonyms
nounLiterature which appeals to, or is marketed toward, male readers.
Origin
dick (“penis”) + lit (“literature”), as a play on chick lit.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
dick lit. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/dick%20lit
“dick lit.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/dick%20lit. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “dick lit,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/dick%20lit.
Source: dick lit on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.