Word.ws English Dictionary

cissplaining

cissplaining noun: the act of condescendingly explaining transgender issues (as a cis person) to a trans person. Also the present participle and gerund of cissplain.

Noun

cissplaining (uncountable)

  1. The act of condescendingly explaining transgender issues (as a cis person) to a trans person.
    • -For me what matters is whether they’d stop if I asked them, or whether I’d get this outburst of cisplaining!2012, anonymous, "Discuss: LGBT Culture", No Definition (Cambridge Students' Union), Easter 2012, page 30
    • I often thought that as a straight, cisgender woman, maybe activism “wasn't my place” and certainly didn't want to fall into the trap of “cisplaining,” if you get my meaning.2015, Victoria Lemay, "Allies must stand for trans teens", QNotes, 16 January 2015 - 29 January 2015, page 4

Also used as

cissplaining is also the present participle and gerund of cissplain.

Questions about cissplaining

What does cissplaining mean?
Cissplaining means the act of condescendingly explaining transgender issues (as a cis person) to a trans person.
What part of speech is cissplaining?
Cissplaining is a noun.

Words near cissplaining in the dictionary

  1. CISSP
  2. cissplain
  3. cissplained
  4. cissplainer
  5. cissplainers
  6. cissplaining
  7. cissplains
  8. CISSPs
  9. cissupremacist
  10. cissupremacy
  11. cissus

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cissplaining (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “cissplaining.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cissplaining. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.