Misanthropist

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

  1. A person who dislikes, distrusts, or avoids human society and interaction with other people
  2. someone who holds a deep contempt for or aversion to humanity and deliberately shuns social contact
  3. a person characterized by hatred, distrust, or profound dislike of mankind and human relationships

Etymology: A misanthropist is someone who hates or distrusts humanity, and the word itself is a fairly recent coinage built from classical Greek roots that were combined during the Enlightenment to name a particular philosophical temperament. The core of the word lies in the Greek prefix "miso-", meaning "to hate," derived from the verb "misein". This root appears in various English words that express aversion or hatred, such as misogyny (hatred of women) and misogamist (one who hates marriage). The second element, "-anthropist", comes from the Greek noun "anthropos", meaning "human being" or "mankind," which is the root of many English words including anthropology, anthropomorphic, and philanthropy. The combination of these two Greek elements to form "misanthrope" (the base noun from which misanthropist derives) appears to have been a deliberate neoclassical coinage, likely first appearing in English during the 17th century. The word gained particular currency in the 18th century, when it was used to describe philosophical positions skeptical of human nature and social conventions. The suffix "-ist" was then added to "misanthrope" to denote a person who holds or practices misanthropy, following the standard English pattern of forming agent nouns from base nouns (as in "philanthropist" from "philanthrope"). The word entered English at a moment when writers and thinkers were increasingly using Greek and Latin roots as building blocks for new vocabulary to express complex ideas about human nature and society. Misanthropist became a useful term for Enlightenment and Romantic-era writers who wished to describe characters or individuals marked by deep cynicism about human nature, a concept that had philosophical weight but lacked a single, established English word before this neoclassical term was adopted. The word has remained in use ever since, though it tends to appear more often in literary and philosophical contexts than in everyday speech.

Synonyms: cynic, pessimist

Antonyms: humanitarian