Word.ws English Dictionary

mesophilia

mesophilia noun: a preference for moderate temperatures.

Noun

mesophilia (uncountable)

  1. A preference for moderate temperatures.
  2. A paraphilic sexual preference for middle-aged people.
    • Michael Seto's (2016) "chronophilia" system is a series of paraphilias […] from infancy (nepiophilia) and pedophilia (prepubescent children) to […] mesophilia (middle-aged adults, typically in their 40s or 50s), and gerontophilia (elderly adults, typically 60s or older).2019, William T. O'Donohue, Daniel S. Bromberg, Sexually Violent Predators: A Clinical Science Handbook, page 41
    • If sexual interest in mature women (mesophilia) can be understood by a dysfunctional youthfulness module (and hence a lack of a force pulling in the opposite direction of maturity), only the first two factors should play a role (H3).2021, Leam A. Craig, Ross M. Bartels, Sexual Deviance, page 47

Origin of mesophilia

From meso- + -philia. In the paraphilia sense, coined by psychologist Michael Seto in 2016.

Questions about mesophilia

What does mesophilia mean?
Mesophilia means a preference for moderate temperatures.
What part of speech is mesophilia?
Mesophilia is a noun.

Words near mesophilia in the dictionary

  1. mesophases
  2. mesophication
  3. mesophil
  4. mesophile
  5. mesophiles
  6. mesophilia
  7. mesophilic
  8. mesophilous
  9. mesophils
  10. mesophloeum
  11. mesophotic

Source and license

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