Talk:emasculate

Antonym
Is there an antonym for this?

My Most Recent Change
Emasculated is for its own entry.

Female equivalent
what's the female equivalent please. .
 * You seem to know the answer from the link you provided. Are you suggesting that some of these terms be added to the entry? — SGconlaw (talk) 16:58, 6 November 2017 (UTC)


 * defeminize? unsex? (As in Lady Macbeth's famous line, "Unsex me here.") An exact equivalent probably doesn't exist, because masculinity and femininity have such different roles in English-speaking cultures. That's presumably why emasculate and effeminate have such strangely similar meanings. —Granger (talk · contribs) 17:01, 6 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Do you mean dissimilar? — SGconlaw (talk) 17:02, 6 November 2017 (UTC)
 * No, I mean similar. From their morphology alone, you would expect "e-mascul-ate" and "ef-femin-ate" to have opposite or coordinate meanings, but instead they have very similar meanings (aside from the fact that the verb meaning is more common for emasculate and the adjective is more common for effeminate). Both words are primarily used to talk about a man who lacks masculinity. —Granger (talk · contribs) 17:13, 6 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Oh, right. I suppose they are somewhat similar, but of course they are not identical. Emasculate means "to remove the masculine characteristics from", whereas effeminate means "like a woman" and doesn't have the deprivation connotation. — SGconlaw (talk) 17:18, 6 November 2017 (UTC)