ephebophilia
noun
ephebophilia is a noun meaning “A sexual attraction towards postpubescent adolescents” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled E-P-H-E-B-O-P-H-I-L-I-A, and it appears about once in every 71 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does ephebophilia mean?
noun
- 1
A sexual attraction towards postpubescent adolescents.
- 2
datedA sexual preference for adolescent boys.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce ephebophilia?
- US
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Flame,_not_lame-ephebophilia.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
How common is ephebophilia?
Ephebophilia appears about once in every 71 million words in written English, the 265,644th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Where does ephebophilia come from?
From Ancient Greek ἔφηβος (éphēbos, “adolescent”) + φιλία (philía, “love, friendship”). By surface analysis, ephebe + -philia.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).