Where does mansplain come from?

Mansplain is a verb blending man and explain. The S comes from the pronunciation of explain (ek-spleyn). It is frequently found as a gerund (mansplaining), agent noun (a mansplainer), and modifier (mansplainy).

While she didn’t coin the term, author Rebecca Solnit conceptualized and popularized the idea thanks to her April 2008 essay, “Men Explain Things to Me: Facts Didn’t Get in Their Way,” later collected into a 2014 book. In it, she discusses the way men do not see women as credible in a variety of situations, such as when reporting a crime.

The essay went viral, especially popular in online feminist communities on the likes of LiveJournal, and helped inspire the term mansplain, first found in May 2008 on a former LiveJournal clone, JournalFen.

Mansplain spread from the feminist (and anti-feminist) blogosphere to the Twitterverse (where men would notoriously pontificate to women with tweets beginning actually) to the mainstream media, where journalist Sam Sifton and lexicographer Grant Barrett included mansplainer in a 2010 Words of the Year roundup in the New York Times.

Mansplain received yet more attention in 2012, appearing in a spate of newspaper articles on the term and concept. In early 2013, the American Dialect Society nominated mansplaining as a Most Creative Word for 2012.

Under the influence of mansplain, -splain spread as a productive word-forming element, like in whitesplain (white people explaining things to minorities).

We added mansplain to our official dictionary, such was the extent of its use, in 2013, with other major dictionaries following suit.

Mansplain has since gone global—and has been taken very seriously in some cases. In 2016, for instance, a Swedish trade union, Unionen, opened a hotline meant to help men learn how to avoid mansplaining and other acts of sexism.