exhibitionist

American  

[ek-suh-bish-uh-nist] / ˌɛk səˈbɪʃ ə nɪst /

noun

1. a person who behaves in ways intended to attract attention or display their powers, personality, etc.

2. Psychiatry. a person with the compulsions of exhibitionism.

---

Usage

What does exhibitionist mean? In psychiatry, an exhibitionist is someone who has a compulsion to exhibit, or display, their genitals in public. Exhibitionist can also be used in nonclinical, everyday speech to refer to a show-off or a person who overshares. A popular slang term for exhibitionist is flasher, but keep in mind that a person diagnosed as an exhibitionist has a clinical disorder. Example: She called him an exhibitionist for his tendency to share too much personal information at parties.

Other Word Forms

• exhibitionistic
  adjective
• exhibitionistically
  adverb
• nonexhibitionistic
  adjective
• semiexhibitionist
  noun

Etymology

Origin of exhibitionist

First recorded in 1815–25; exhibition + -ist

Explanation

An exhibitionist is a person who thrives on getting a lot of attention. If your best friend is an exhibitionist, you're probably used to him suddenly bursting loudly into song in public places. Exhibitionist is a fancy word for "show-off." If you're an exhibitionist, you crave the kind of reaction you get from being the center of attention. In some cases, an exhibitionist gets that attention by taking his or her clothes off in public — a streaker or flasher is also an exhibitionist. The word comes from the Old French exibicion, "show or display," from the Latin exhibere, "to show or present."

Example Sentences

We live in such a voyeuristic, exhibitionist era that if you are not revealing some of yourself, you're not going to develop a relationship with the audience.

From Salon • Jul. 26, 2023

But back then, only science fiction writers could have foretold the tech revolution and the galaxies of social media platforms that formed a new universe of exhibitionist buffoons.

From Washington Post • Apr. 14, 2023

I probably have always been an exhibitionist, but I've done things that I never thought I could do, and it is because of cancer.

From BBC • Apr. 10, 2023

Lavishly tattooed before it was cool — he describes himself as “a marked man” — he’s an exhibitionist and provocateur.

From Los Angeles Times • Jul. 9, 2021

As a prominent example of this class the exhibitionist, Rosa Lee Plemons at the age of eighteen weighed only 27 pounds.

From Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine by Pyle, Walter L. (Walter Lytle)