fandom

American  

[fan-duhm] / ˈfæn dəm /

noun

1. fans collectively, as of a celebrity, a movie, a book, or a professional game or sport.

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Etymology

Origin of fandom

An Americanism dating back to 1900–05; fan ² + -dom

Explanation

Use the word fandom to talk about the community of people who admire a particular celebrity, hero, sports team, or TV show. If you are president of the Boston Red Sox fan club, you're part of the team's fandom. Your favorite boy band might have a fandom that consists mainly of screaming pre-teens, while National Public Radio's fandom is probably mostly middle aged. If you are a fan of a singer or a series of comic books, you can say you belong to their fandom. The word has been around since the very early twentieth century, from fan, a baseball slang abbreviation of fanatic, which comes from the Latin fanaticus, "mad, or inspired by a god."

Example Sentences

Danielle Sarver Coombs, researcher and co-writer of the Routledge Handbook of Sport Fans and Fandom, says the teams we support provide us with a shared identity.

From BBC • Aug. 8, 2025

Fandom is a word more associated with glossy superhero blockbusters, but it was one of the through lines of this year’s festival.

From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 2, 2025

She is the author of “Nerd: Adventures in Fandom From This Universe to the Multiverse” and the poetry collection “Erou.”

From New York Times • Aug. 2, 2023

"It's not cookie-cutter, when you like this thing, you're a fan, then you can't like anything else. Fandom reflects back something inside someone. Aren't we all more than one thing?"

From Salon • May 29, 2023

Fandom has a related proverb to the effect that "Hacking is a conversational black hole!". :neophilia: /nee`oh-fil'-ee-*/ n.

From The Jargon File, Version 2.9.10, 01 Jul 1992 by Raymond, Eric S.