Topic: Terms of hatred

Not too long ago, we illustrated the word misomusism with a quotation from Hanns Johst, a playwright whose 1933 play about a Nazi martyr was dedicated to Hitler. Johst's character mused, "Whenever I hear the word 'culture,' I release the safety catch of my Browning." We went on to explain misomusism as a hatred of learning, of culture, and of intellectualism, and we talked about its history. The Greek misos means "hatred," while muses comes from the Greek mousa, meaning "learning." The Greek mousa is the source of the nine Greek muses of arts and science.

What we failed to explain is why the most ardent intellectual and culture lover cannot locate misomusism in most dictionaries. Although misomusism—meaning a hatred of learning, of culture, and of intellectualism—is believed to have been coined sometime in the 17th century, it is far from well enough established to have earned a spot in even the largest unabridged dictionaries.

However, other hatred-based terms have caught on with the public. In addition to misogyny, misandry, and misopedia (hatred of women, men, and children, respectively), we came up with two cousins of misomusism: misoneism ("hatred or intolerance of something new or changed") and misology ("hatred, distrust, or dislike of argument, reasoning, or enlightenment").

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