Word.ws English Dictionary

shunamitism

shunamitism noun: the ancient practice of an old man sleeping with, but not necessarily having sex with, a young virgin to preserve his youth.

Noun

shunamitism (uncountable)

  1. (historical) The ancient practice of an old man sleeping with, but not necessarily having sex with, a young virgin to preserve his youth.

Forms of shunamitism

alternative formShunamitism
alternative formShunammitism

Origin of shunamitism

From Shunamite + -ism, after Abishag, a Shunamite woman who served this purpose for David.

Questions about shunamitism

What does shunamitism mean?
Shunamitism means the ancient practice of an old man sleeping with, but not necessarily having sex with, a young virgin to preserve his youth.
What part of speech is shunamitism?
Shunamitism is a noun.

Words near shunamitism in the dictionary

  1. Shumways
  2. shun
  3. Shun-te
  4. Shunamite
  5. Shunamites
  6. shunamitism
  7. shunammite
  8. shunammites
  9. Shunammitism
  10. Shuncheng
  11. Shunde

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shunamitism (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.

Last updated:

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