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.

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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

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

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Etymology

Origin of exhibitionist

First recorded in 1815–25; exhibition + -ist

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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

See Examples For:

exhibitionist

But Redmond doesn’t consider herself an exhibitionist, either.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 27, 2026

The role suited Reid Banks' exhibitionist nature - but being "booted off" to the job of backroom scriptwriter did not.

From BBC ● Apr. 5, 2024

"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

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 Walter L. (Walter Lytle) Pyle

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