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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

philander.

A lover.

9 characters3 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/fɪˈlændə/Received-Pronunciation/fɪˈlændəɹ/General-American

  1. A lover.

  2. A South American opossum, bare-tailed woolly opossum, of species Caluromys philander (syn. Didelphis philander).

  3. A greater bilby, an Australian marsupial of species Macrotis lagotis (syn. Perameles lagotis).

    obsolete
Where this word comes from

As a verb, first seen in the 1824 play Philandering: Or, The Rose Queen, by Samuel Beazley. From the given name Philander, used for love interest or suitor stock characters in several 18th century stories and poems, from Ancient Greek Φίλανδρος (Phílandros), name of the mythological son of the nymph Acacallis and the god Apollo. Semantically disconnected from the adjective φίλανδρος (phílandros, “loving one’s husband; excessively attracted to males, slutty, boy crazy”).

verb/fɪˈlændə/Received-Pronunciation/fɪˈlændəɹ/General-American

  1. To woo women; to play the male flirt.

    intransitive
Where this word comes from

As a verb, first seen in the 1824 play Philandering: Or, The Rose Queen, by Samuel Beazley. From the given name Philander, used for love interest or suitor stock characters in several 18th century stories and poems, from Ancient Greek Φίλανδρος (Phílandros), name of the mythological son of the nymph Acacallis and the god Apollo. Semantically disconnected from the adjective φίλανδρος (phílandros, “loving one’s husband; excessively attracted to males, slutty, boy crazy”).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.