homophobia

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˌhəʊ.məˈfəʊ.bi.ə/, /ˌhɒ.mə-/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˌhoʊ.məˈfoʊ.bi.ə/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -əʊbiə
• Hyphenation: ho‧mo‧pho‧bia

From homo- (“from homosexual”) +‎ -phobia. Coined by American psychologist George Weinberg in 1971 in Society and the Healthy Homosexual.

homophobia (countable and uncountable, plural homophobias)

1. Hatred, fear, dislike of, or prejudice against homosexuals, or LGBTQ people in general.

   Synonyms: gay-hate, gaycism, gayphobia, heterosexism, homoerotophobia, homomisia, homophobism

   Antonym: homomania

   Hypernyms: see Thesaurus:prejudice

   Hyponyms: gayphobia, lesbophobia, dykephobia

   Coordinate terms: acephobia, biphobia, transphobia

   • 2005, Bill Clinton, My Life‎^[3], volume II, New York: Vintage Books, →ISBN, →OCLC, pages 45–46:

     He lost his racism when he worked with a black man in Chicago. He lost his homophobia when he was befriended and looked after by his gay neighbors, a doctor and a nurse, in Little Rock.

   • 2025 June 20, Nick Levine, “'In every theatre, people would leave': How 'gay cowboy movie' Brokeback Mountain challenged Hollywood – and the US”, in BBC‎^[4]:

     Thinly-veiled homophobia – this time in early-2000s Hollywood – made Brokeback Mountain an immense challenge for Ossana and her fellow producer James Schamus.

2. (The addition of quotations indicative of this usage is being sought:) (Internet slang, humorous) Deliberate misspelling of heterochromia.

   a cat with homophobia

• In the 1990s, behavioral scientists William O'Donohue and Christine Caselles argued that the term homophobia was pejorative.^[1] In 2012, the Associated Press Stylebook was revised to advise against using -phobia words in non-clinical ways, and AP editor Dave Minthorn suggested replacing "homophobic" with "anti-gay".^[2][3]

• heterosexism
• heterophobia
• heterophobism
• gaycism

• homophobia on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Latin homo (“man”) + -phobia (“fear”)

homophobia (uncountable)

1. (obsolete) A pathological fear of mankind.

   Synonym: anthropophobia

• misanthropy
• androphobia
• gynophobia

• “homophobia”, in Cambridge English Dictionary, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 1999–present.
• “homophobia”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
• “homophobia”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• “homophobia”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.
• “Beautiful Cat with Homophobia”, in Know Your Meme, website first launched 2007