Meanings
- uncountableSexual attraction towards girls in late adolescence.
3 more examples
'Cyprus Avenue', his tale of adolescent torment and parthenophilia on the Beersbridge Road, captured the very sort of magical dislocation we felt as we pursued our pleasures and our exotic ideas on the normal streets, expressing ourselves in a black-through-white idiom, and we told each other who Madame George was, what street Van was looking into from an upstairs window.
1983, Robert Johnstone, Bill Kirk, Images of Belfast, page 58Hebephilia (i.e., sexual attraction toward early pubescent body scheme meaning development stage with beginning growth of pubic hairs and breasts etc., i.e. Tanner stages 2 and 3 -- while the sexual preference for the late male pubescent body scheme is called "ephebophilia" and for the late female adolescence "parthenophilia") is an independent disorder of sexual preference to be diagnosed according to the International Classification System of the World Health Organization (ICD-10) or the American Psychiatric Association (DSM-IV-TR), not yet specifically coded (for DSM-V there are plans to change this).
2012, Klaus M. Beier, Kurt K. Loewit, Sexual Medicine in Clinical Practice, →ISBN, page 50The term hebephilia has to be distinguished from ephebophilia (gr. “ephebos”—young man) and parthenophilia (gr. “parthenos”— virgin). Both refer to the sexual preference for male or female adolescents with mostly late pubescent body age (Tanner stages 4 and 5) and are subtypes of teleiophilia (Blanchard et al. 2000; Hirschfeld 1906).
2016, Helmut Kury, Sławomir Redo, Evelyn Shea, Women and Children as Victims and Offenders, →ISBN
Origin
- Ancient Greekπαρθένος“virgin, young woman”
- Englishparthenophilia
Ancient Greek παρθένος (parthénos, “virgin, young woman”) and φιλία (philía, “(fraternal) love”)
More words from Ancient Greek
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
parthenophilia. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/parthenophilia
“parthenophilia.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/parthenophilia. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “parthenophilia,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/parthenophilia.
Source: parthenophilia on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.