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pederasty

/ˈpɛd.ə.ɹæs.ti/noun

pederasty is a noun meaning “Erotic love, sexually expressed or chaste, between a man and an adolescent boy” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled P-E-D-E-R-A-S-T-Y and has 4 syllables, and it appears about once in every 11 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of pederasty is pederasties.

What does pederasty mean?

noun

  1. 1

    USErotic love, sexually expressed or chaste, between a man and an adolescent boy.

  2. 2

    USarchaicAnal intercourse in general, usually between a man and an adolescent boy.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce pederasty?

  • UK /ˈpɛd.ə.ɹəs.ti/
  • US /ˈpɛd.ə.ɹæs.ti/
  • US /ˈpi.də.ɹæs.ti/

Pederasty has 4 syllables (counted from the pronunciation).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Flame,_not_lame-pederasty.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of pederasty

  • pederasties plural
  • paederasty

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is pederasty?

Pederasty appears about once in every 11 million words in written English, the 98,107th 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).

Pederasty in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

In the sense pederasty:

LanguageWords
Frenchpédérastie
GermanPäderastie
Portuguesepederastia
Spanishpederastia

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does pederasty come from?

Borrowed from Ancient Greek παιδεραστία (paiderastía, “love of boys”), from παιδεραστής (paiderastḗs, “pederast”), from παῖς (paîs, “child, son, boy”) + ἐραστής (erastḗs, “lover”), from ἔραμαι (éramai, “to love”).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).