chauvinist
Americannoun
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a person who is aggressively and blindly patriotic, especially one devoted to military glory.
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a person who believes one gender is superior to the other, as a or a
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of chauvinist
First recorded in 1860–65; chauvin(ism) ( def. ) + -ist ( def. )
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Explanation
A chauvinist is someone who blindly and enthusiastically believes in the superiority of his cause or people. If you grew up in New York and refuse to eat at any pizzeria beyond a five-mile radius of the Empire State Building, you could be described as a New York pizza chauvinist. The word chauvinist comes from Nicholas Chauvin, a French soldier — probably fictional — who was so devoted to Napoleon that he continued to zealously support the emperor even after Napoleon rejected him. The put-down “male chauvinist pig” describes a man who believes that women are not as intelligent or worthy of respect as men. Often when we hear the word chauvinist, we think of arrogant men.
Vocabulary lists containing chauvinist
Ender's Game
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Before the Ever After
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Vocabulary Video Contest (2013) - List 1
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
In 2005, the year I graduated college, Ariel Levy’s Female Chauvinist Pigs came out.
From Slate • May 12, 2025
Feminism, as Ariel Levy put it in “Female Chauvinist Pigs,” got “raunchy.”
From The New Yorker • Nov. 1, 2019
She was later introduced to Ariel Levy, the author of “The Rules Do Not Apply” and “Female Chauvinist Pigs,” who proved to be a co-writer on par excellence with J.R.
From New York Times • Oct. 4, 2019
She tells me it was reading Ariel Levy’s book Female Chauvinist Pigs that opened her eyes.
From The Guardian • Aug. 29, 2015
I find a speech of his in a most illuminating book by a Danish professor on German Chauvinist literature.
From Towards the Goal by Ward, Humphry, Mrs.
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
