Meanings
- uncountableSexual harassment in writing.
Moneypenny reminding Bond of his responsibilities and limitations curtails the textual harassment of the character.
2002, Tara Brabazon, Ladies Who Lunge: Celebrating Difficult Women, page 1041 more example
She places the textual harassment experienced by all women writers at her own disposal as evidence of her grace, and hence her authority.
1991, Karma Lochrie, Margery Kempe and Translations of the Flesh, page 113 - uncountableAggressive, distorting literary or textual criticism.
The process is one of systematic misconstruction, a kind of textual harassment.
1998, Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text?: The Bible, the Reader, and the Morality of, page 1492 more examples
Iraneus contrasts the unity and integrity of these writings with the distorted, contextless citations of the Gnostics. He describes the code of textual harassment that allows these heretics to chip away at the Scriptures, […].
1991, Jan Gorak, The Making of the Modern Canon: Genesis and Crisis of a Literary Idea, page 24So the deconstructionist practises what has been called textual harassment or oppositional reading, reading with the aim of unmasking internal contradictions or inconsistencies in the text.
2002, Peter Barry, Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory, page 72 - uncountableSexual harassment by means of explicit text messages.
Origin
Blend of textual + sexual harassment. The term textual harassment is from Mary Jacobus, 'Is There a Woman in This Text?' New Literary History 14 (Fall 1982): 117-41."
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
textual harassment. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/textual%20harassment
“textual harassment.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/textual%20harassment. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “textual harassment,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/textual%20harassment.
Source: textual harassment on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.