pathic

See also: -pathic

English

Etymology

From Latin pathicus, from Ancient Greek παθικός (pathikós), from πάθος (páthos, “suffering, feeling”), from πάσχω (páskhō, “I feel, I suffer”).

Pronunciation

(UK) IPA^(key): /ˈpæθɪk/

Noun

pathic (plural pathics)

(now literary) Synonym of bottom: a passive male partner in homosexual anal intercourse.
- 1810, Lord Byron, letter (to Henry Drury), 3 May 1810:
  In England the vices in fashion are whoring & drinking, in Turkey, Sodomy & smoking, we prefer a girl and a bottle, they a pipe and pathic.
- 1962 [1959], William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch, New York: Grove Press, page 115:
  And enough of these gooey saints with a look of pathic dismay as if they getting fucked up the ass and try not to pay any mind.
- 1975: Robertson Davies, World of Wonders
  But in those days I was Paul Dempster, who had been made to forget it and take a name from the side of a barn, and be the pathic of a perverted drug-taker.
- 1976: Robert Nye, Falstaff
  Clermont (known to his friends as Cordelia) was a nancy, a pathic, a male varlet, a masculine whore.

Translations

passive man partner in anal intercourse

Greek:
Ancient: παθικός m (pathikós)

Adjective

pathic (comparative more pathic, superlative most pathic)

Passive; suffering.
Relating to disease.

References

pathic in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913

Anagrams

haptic, phatic