feminist

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noun

fem·​i·​nist ˈfe-mə-nist 

plural feminists

: a person who supports or engages in feminism

Similarly, Saint Thomas's resident nun, Sister Maureen (Ann Dowd), is no girlish cutie: She's an ardent, in-your-face feminist.

—Terrence Rafferty

He [Stendhal] was a feminist and … he held that to deprive women of education 'deprives society of half its potential for intellectual achievement'.

—V. S. Pritchett

feminist

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adjective

: of, relating to, supporting, or compatible with feminism

feminist theory

the feminist movement

The act of speaking is a way women come to power, telling our stories, sharing history, engaging in feminist discussion.

—bell hooks

[Patricia] Ireland, past president of the National Organization for Women, is perhaps the best-known former Pan Am flight attendant of the '60s; seven years working for the airline helped inspire her feminist activism, which included campaigning for the Equal Rights Amendment.

—Sarah Rose

Examples of feminist in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Noun

Most women fall somewhere in between those two tropes, and for years feminists like Strauss have been working to do away with that false binary. —Nicole Fallert, USA Today, 10 Oct. 2025

Even John Stuart Mill, the model nineteenth-century liberal and a feminist, did not think that Indians in British India were ready for free speech. —Louis Menand, New Yorker, 26 Sep. 2025

Adjective

The male gaze has always been around — art in the eye of the male beholder — but the term came into modern existence as a feminist theory coined by film critic Laura Mulvey in 1975. —Madeline Holcombe, CNN Money, 11 Oct. 2025

Gurba constructs a labyrinth of language where California poppies, childhood witchcraft and feminist rage bloom side by side. —Ana Cristina Frías Cabrera, USA Today, 8 Oct. 2025

Word History

First Known Use

Noun

1887, in the meaning defined above

Adjective

1852, in the meaning defined above

Phrases Containing feminist

• anti-feminist
• pre-feminist
• trans exclusionary radical feminist