Learn English – A masochist without the sexual baggage

single-word-requestssynonyms

The word masochist is used for someone who enjoys what others consider unpleasant:

1.1 (In general use) a person who enjoys an activity that appears to be painful or tedious:

It also has song sexual connotations:

1.0 A person who derives sexual gratification from their own pain or
humiliation:

Is there a word that describes this condition without the sexual baggage?

Citations from ODO

Best Answer

I believe that you have overestimated the problem. "Masochism" was indeed coined to describe sexual gratification through pain, specifically in the case of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch.

However, the word has gained such wide currency without the sexual baggage that unless you specify the sexual version, it is unlikely you will offend anyone's sense of propriety.

For instance the n-gram of "masochism" vs "sexual masochism"enter image description here https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=masochism%2C+sexual+masochism&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cmasochism%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Csexual%20masochism%3B%2Cc0

shows the comparative usage pretty well.

Related Topic