enby
/ˈɛnbi/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.55 in modern English
9
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
2
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Pronunciation spelling of NB (“a non-binary person; a person whose gender identity is not strictly that of a man or a woman; one who is outside of the gender binary”).
Informal
adj
Pronunciation spelling of NB (“non-binary; having or pertaining to a gender identity that is not strictly that of a man or a woman, that is, outside of the gender binary”).
Informal
Example Sentences
- "i wish there was an nb equivalent to words like boys and girls / nb / enby / enbies"
- "I doubt most wedding fair vendors would recognise an enby even if you carried an explanatory sign."
- "So, boys and girls and enbies, if the sex isn't good at or very near the beginning, the passage of time and/or muttering of vows isn't going to fix it."
- "'Ladies and enbies,' she said, the five foot three height requirement for pilots continued to mean that nearly all the human fighter pilots she had ever met were women or enbies. She could see no evidence before her that anything had changed. 'You might have heard of me, my call sign is Romeo,' she paused while the pilots giggled and sniggered."
- "He’d begun the day’s broadcast by rattling off a standard opening monologue: “Folks, we’re live and alive, and I hope all the boys, girls, and enbies”—nonbinary people—“are having a fantastic one.”"
- "For non-binary-identified (or, to use my current favourite term, enby) people, this is magnified by the fact that while most of everyone except Germaine Greer and Donald Trump are prepared to recognise that trans people do exist these days, the enby population is still struggling up that hill with our glitter in the one hand and our neckties in the other."
Etymology
The noun is a pronunciation spelling of NB, an initialism of non-binary. The word was coined by the Tumblr user “revolutionator” in 2013 as “an nb equivalent to words like boys and girls”: see the quotation. The adjective is derived from the noun.
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈɛnbi/
- British English: /ˈɛnbi/