Meanings
- feminismExhibiting or pertaining to himpathy; inappropriately sympathetic to men or boys, especially ones guilty of sexual transgressions.
When a woman fails to give a man what he's supposedly owed, she will often face punishment and reprisal — whether from him, his himpathetic supporters, or the misogynistic social structures in [society].
2020, Kate Manne, Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women, Crown, →ISBN, page 113 more examples
Yet it would be a mistake to view them as on a different plane of moral obtuseness, as opposed to merely being on the extreme end of a himpathetic spectrum on which many of us lie. Brock Turner's defenders exhibited forgiving tendencies, ...
2017, Kate Manne, Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 200But in a himpathetic world view this does make sense because the question we are invited to ask is what does it mean for him? That Kavanaugh's (and, to an extent, Thomas's) privilege is such that his greatest fear is the loss of his name […]
2019, Karen Boyle, #MeToo, Weinstein and Feminism, Springer Nature, →ISBN, page 113This was picked up and repeated by women in the media who were “himpathetic” to the idea. Trump's win “gives us an opportunity to reflect on how badly misogynist forces can distort our thinking and bias our reasoning” (Manne 2019, 250).
2019, Maria B. Marron, Misogyny and Media in the Age of Trump, Lexington Books, →ISBN, page 98
Origin
Blend of him + sympathetic, or of himpathy + sympathetic.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
himpathetic. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/himpathetic
“himpathetic.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/himpathetic. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “himpathetic,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/himpathetic.
Source: himpathetic on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.