Word.ws English Dictionary

transvestite

Syllables: trans·ves·tite/tɹænzˈvɛs.taɪt/

transvestite noun: a person who sometimes wears clothes traditionally worn by and associated with the opposite sex; typically a male who cross-dresses occasionally by habit or personal choice.

Noun

transvestite (plural transvestites)

  1. (dated) A person who sometimes wears clothes traditionally worn by and associated with the opposite sex; typically a male who cross-dresses occasionally by habit or personal choice.
    • Even though Steven used to dress up in his sister's clothes, it still came as a surprise he ended up as a transvestite.
    • Now, we already know that Gerald Hadleigh was a transvestite or a transsexual, whatever the term is.1998 March 29, Anthony Horowitz et al., “Written in Blood”, in Midsomer Murders
  2. A person, typically a heterosexual male, who compulsively seeks and derives paraphilic sexual arousal from cross-dressing, especially if the urges and behavior cause the patient distress or social impairment.
  3. (dated) An animal that engages in sexual mimicry.
    • "Proper" scorpion fly behavior entails the catching of an edible insect by the male, who then offers it to the female […] If she likes the gift, she mates with the male. Thornhill, however, has observed males approaching other males, assuming the female role until they get a grip on the food. Once...1979 August 18, “Get A Grip On The Food”, in Gay Community News, volume 7, number 5, page 2

transvestite meaning in Indonesian

transvestite in Indonesian

cross-dresser — see also cross-dresser
banci

Examples of transvestite in a sentence

  • For if a transvestite wanted to be female all the time, he would be a transsexualist.
  • I suspected most of the culprits to be transvestites.
  • Baudelaire is uninterested in boy-girls or transvestites.

All 10 example sentences with transvestite

Synonyms of transvestite

Forms of transvestite

pluraltransvestites

Plural of transvestite: transvestites

Origin of transvestite

Borrowed from Latin trāns + vestītus, form of vestiō (“to clothe, to dress”) (as in English vestment, vest). Literally, a "cross-dresser". From transvestitism, from German Transvestitismus, coined in 1910 by Magnus Hirschfeld (the practice itself is much older).

Words formed from transvestite

Questions about transvestite

What does transvestite mean?
Transvestite means a person who sometimes wears clothes traditionally worn by and associated with the opposite sex; typically a male who cross-dresses occasionally by habit or personal choice.
What is transvestite in Indonesian?
Transvestite in Indonesian is banci. See Transvestite meaning in Indonesian.
What part of speech is transvestite?
Transvestite is a noun.
How do you pronounce transvestite?
Transvestite is pronounced /tɹænzˈvɛs.taɪt/.
What is the plural of transvestite?
The plural of transvestite is transvestites.

Words near transvestite in the dictionary

  1. transvesting
  2. transvestism
  3. transvestisms
  4. transvestist
  5. transvestists
  6. transvestite
  7. transvestites
  8. transvestitism
  9. transvestitisms
  10. transvestophile
  11. transvestophiles

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: transvestite (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-transvestite.wav.

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