Gender & Sexuality dictionary
enby
[en-bee]
黑料网 does聽enby mean?
In the LGBTQ+ community, an enby聽is a nonbinary person. It’s a phonetic pronunciation of NB, short for nonbinary, or聽people who do not identify their gender聽as male or female.
Where does enby come from?
Examples of nonbinary genders can be found in in Southeast Asia (hijra) and Native American cultures (two-spirit), and the term nonbinary gained wider recognition in the Western mainstream in the 2000s.
Enby emerged around 2013 on Tumblr, the social media platform known for its active transgender and genderqueer community and lexicon. Nonbinary was shortened to NB, which, if its letters are phonetically pronounced and then spelled out, yields enby. The idea of enby is to give nonbinary people a short-hand equivalent to their binary counterparts, e.g., (a) boy/male/man and (a) girl/female/woman.
Everyone: Happy International Women鈥檚 Day!
Me, an enby:— Mx. AC Dumlao 鉁� #CC19 1/24-26 (@mxacdumlao)
Search interest in 别苍产测听spiked in 2018, likely due to celebrities coming out or identifying as nonbinary individuals. For instance, in July 2018, actor聽Bex Taylor-Klaus of TV show The Killing fame tweeted they were聽enby.
I came out as trans non-binary in a room full of people today. Guess it鈥檚 time for me to do that on here, too …
Hi. I鈥檓 Bex, and the rumors are true. I鈥檓 v enby.
— 鉁˙ex Taylor-Klaus鉁� (@IBexWeBex)
Gender identities are often represented by a flag 鈥� sometimes with several variants. This is perhaps the most recognized 别苍产测听flag:
Gender Wiki
Examples of enby
Who uses enby?
Enby can be a noun, e.g., “They’re an enby,” or modifier, “They’re an enby person.” The term is primarily used by people who self-identify as enby, or in discussions of the LGBTQ+ community generally, especially on topics of more inclusive language in the popular and public lexicon (e.g., not defaulting to terms like boys and girls in school).
More than being shorthand for the longer nonbinary or nonbinary person, the term聽enby also has a more conversational and lexical naturalness to i than NB.
Less interestingly, enby is also a very common typo for envy, given that the V and B key are right next to each other on the QWERTY keyboard.
Note
This is not meant to be a formal definition of enby like most terms we define on Dictionary.com, but is rather an informal word summary that hopefully touches upon the key aspects of the meaning and usage of enby that will help our users expand their word mastery.