Word.ws English Dictionary

gylany

Syllables: gy·lany/ˈɡɪləni/

gylany noun: a social system based on equality of women and men.

Noun

gylany (countable and uncountable, plural gylanies)

  1. A social system based on equality of women and men.
    • [T]he two projected androcratic futures—a totalitarian future or no future at all—are not our only alternatives. There is the third alternative, the humanistic future to which the concept of gylany, both the balanced core and the logical requirement of our cultural evolution, provides the key.1981 December, Riane Tennenhaus Eisler, “Gylany: The Balanced Future”, in Futures: The Journal of Forecasting, Planning and Policy, volume 13, number 6, Oxford: Elsevier Science, →DOI, →ISSN, →OCLC...
    • It seems particularly fitting to use terms of Greek derivation to describe how these two contrasting social models have affected our cultural evolution. For the conflict between gylany and androcracy as two very different ways of living on this earth—and the advancement of our evolution through...1987, Riane Eisler, “The Other Half of History: Part I”, in The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future, San Francisco, Calif.: Harper & Row, →ISBN, page 106

Examples of gylany in a sentence

  • Old Europe and Anatolia, as well as Minoan Crete, were a gylany.1989, Marija Gimbutas, The Language of the Goddess: Unearthing the Hidden Symbols of Western Civilization, San Francisco, Calif.: Harper &...
  • In a gylany, the sexes are "linked" rather than hierarchically "ranked" which is typical of patriarchal societies.1996, Harald Haarmann, “Iconography, Symbolism and Writing at the Dawn of Civilization – Old Europe from the Seventh to the Fourth...
  • Did anything like gylany ever exist in the ancient Cherokee world?2013, Donald N. Yates, “The Mother Goddess in America”, in Old Souls in a New World: The Secret History of the Cherokee Indians (Cherokee...

Forms of gylany

pluralgylanies

Origin of gylany

From Ancient Greek γυνή (gunḗ, “woman”) + English l(inking) and Ancient Greek λ(ύειν) (l(úein)), λ(ύω) (l(úō), “to dissolve, sever; to release, set free”) + Ancient Greek ἀνδρός (andrós) (genitive singular of ἀνήρ (anḗr, “man”)) + -y (suffix forming abstract nouns denoting a state, condition, or quality); coined by the Austrian-born American cultural historian and author Riane Eisler (born 1931) in writings in the 1980s, including The Chalice and the Blade (1987): see the quotations.

Words formed from gylany

Questions about gylany

What does gylany mean?
Gylany means a social system based on equality of women and men.
How do you use gylany in a sentence?
Old Europe and Anatolia, as well as Minoan Crete, were a gylany.
What part of speech is gylany?
Gylany is a noun.
How do you pronounce gylany?
Gylany is pronounced /ˈɡɪləni/ (UK).
What is the plural of gylany?
The plural of gylany is gylanies.

Words near gylany in the dictionary

  1. gyil
  2. gyils
  3. Gyland
  4. gylanic
  5. gylanies
  6. gylany
  7. gylden
  8. gyldens
  9. gyle
  10. gyle tan
  11. gyle tans

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gylany (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-gylany.wav.

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