ecdysiast
/ɛkˈdɪz.i.æst/
ecdysiast noun: an erotic dancer who removes their clothes as a form of entertainment; a stripper.
Noun
ecdysiast (plural ecdysiasts)
- An erotic dancer who removes their clothes as a form of entertainment; a stripper.
- I had never seen an ecdysiast before; toward the end she was wearing nothing but seven beads, four of them sweat.1973, Kyril Bonfiglioli, Don't Point That Thing at Me, Penguin, published 2001, page 79
- However, the Queen of Ecdysiasts, Gypsy Rose Lee, was not amused. In a 1940 interview, she leveled her guns against Mencken: "Ecdysiast, he calls me! Why, the man... has been reading books! Dictionaries! We don't wear feathers and molt them off... What does he know about stripping?"2004, Chrysti the Wordsmith, Verbivore's Feast: A Banquet of Word and Phrase Origins, Farcountry Press, page 107
- Synonyms:
- exotic dancer, stripper
Synonyms of ecdysiast
Forms of ecdysiast
| plural | ecdysiasts |
|---|
Origin of ecdysiast
Coined by H. L. Mencken from ecdysis (“moulting”) (on the model of enthusiast etc.).
Questions about ecdysiast
- What does ecdysiast mean?
- Ecdysiast means an erotic dancer who removes their clothes as a form of entertainment; a stripper.
- What part of speech is ecdysiast?
- Ecdysiast is a noun.
- How do you pronounce ecdysiast?
- Ecdysiast is pronounced /ɛkˈdɪz.i.æst/.
- What is the plural of ecdysiast?
- The plural of ecdysiast is ecdysiasts.
Words near ecdysiast in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: ecdysiast (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-ecdysiast.ogg.
Cite this entry: “ecdysiast.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ecdysiast. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.