Word.ws English Dictionary

mankeeping

mankeeping noun: the invisible social and emotional labor that women do for men in heterosexual relationships.

Noun

mankeeping (uncountable)

  1. The invisible social and emotional labor that women do for men in heterosexual relationships.
    • As a result, men turn to the women in their lives to fulfill their emotional needs. Ferrara and her coauthor are not the first to suggest that women bear the burden of mankeeping (although they did coin the term).2024 October 23, Kim Elsesser, “Mankeeping: How Shrinking Male Social Networks May Burden Women”, in Forbes, archived from the original on 16 Jan 2025
    • Yes, but mankeeping is a real thing: men don’t mankeep; women mankeep.2025 June 16, “Mankeeping: why single women are giving up dating”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 24 Jul 2025

Origin of mankeeping

From man + keeping.

Words formed from mankeeping

Questions about mankeeping

What does mankeeping mean?
Mankeeping means the invisible social and emotional labor that women do for men in heterosexual relationships.
What part of speech is mankeeping?
Mankeeping is a noun.

Words near mankeeping in the dictionary

  1. Manke
  2. manked
  3. mankeep
  4. mankeeper
  5. mankeepers
  6. mankeeping
  7. mankeeps
  8. Mankell
  9. mankept
  10. Manker
  11. Mankers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mankeeping (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: “mankeeping.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mankeeping. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.