fandom
Americannoun
Etymology
Origin of fandom
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."
Vocabulary lists containing fandom
A Hero's Guide to Summer Vacation
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-dom and -hood
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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.
Fandoms still exist, but they are more diffuse.
From Los Angeles Times • Nov. 20, 2022
Fandoms of groups like BTS and other anime and video games quickly seized space on the canvas.
From Washington Post • Apr. 4, 2022
Fandoms, she adds, “get passed down through the family.”
From New York Times • Sep. 2, 2019
Fandoms can be “temporary or permanent,” says Zoe Fraade-Blanar in Superfandom: How Our Obsessions are Changing What We Buy and Who We Are, “but they are always timely.”
From The Verge • Nov. 3, 2017
Fandoms are often entitled and whiny, but in this case they were absolutely right.
From Slate • Dec. 21, 2016
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.
