philanderer

noun

phi·​lan·​der·​er fə-ˈlan-dər-ər 

plural philanderers

disapproving

: a man who has sexual relations with many women

especially : a man who is unfaithful to his wife or partner

… on a realistic level King is an incorrigible philanderer who deserts his gentle wife …

—Louise Westling

[Florenz] Ziegfeld's private life was messy. He was an outrageous philanderer who at one point kept a mistress in the same hotel he lived in with Anna Held.

—Alicia Metcalf Miller

Until then, public officials who were philanderers or alcoholics … pretty much operated with immunity from disclosure so long as their professional performance was unaffected.

—Tom Goldstein

Synonyms of philanderer

• womanizer
• lover

Examples of philanderer in a Sentence

an incorrigible philanderer who was often in lust and never in love

Recent Examples on the Web

All that, plus Liev Schreiber as a pill-popping philanderer named Tag, Dakota Fanning in pregnancy prosthetics, and Donna Lynne Champlin as the beleaguered detective trying to solve the murder. —Kevin Jacobsen, Entertainment Weekly, 22 May 2026

Is Jack a do-nothing philanderer while Shyanne desperately tries to preserve their five-year romance, or is the truth more complicated than that? —Todd Gilchrist, IndieWire, 7 May 2026

Burden’s grandmother Babe Paley, a prominent New York socialite, was married to William Paley, the founder of CBS and a serial philanderer. —Marc Weingarten, Los Angeles Times, 31 Mar. 2026

There were, and are, persistent rumors that Bill Paley was a philanderer, rumors fictionalized and retold, in print and on television, like a game of telephone, the facts becoming murkier in each retelling. —Belle Burden, Vanity Fair, 6 Jan. 2026

Word History

First Known Use

1841, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for philanderer

• bearer
• carer
• error
• fairer
• ferrer
• rarer
• sharer
• terror
• wearer
• cupbearer
• declarer
• preparer