from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
noun One who derives pleasure through cruelty or pain to others.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
noun someone who obtains pleasure from inflicting pain or others
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Named after the Marquis de Sade, famed for his libertine writings depicting the pleasure of inflicting pain to others. The word for "sadism" (sadisme) is forged or acknowledged in the 1834 posthumous reprint of French lexicographer Boiste's Dictionnaire universel de la langue française; it is reused along with "sadist" (sadique) in 1862 by French critic Sainte-Beuve in his commentary of Flaubert's novel Salammbô; it is reused (possibly independently) in 1886 by Austrian psychiatrist Krafft-Ebing in Psychopathia Sexualis which popularized it; it is directly reused in 1905 by Freud in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality which definitely established the word.
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Examples
"Seidl has been described as a sadist, but underneath all the gloom and doom and constant cruelty is obviously a disappointed idealist crying out for people to care for one another."
"Seidl has been described as a sadist, but underneath all the gloom and doom and constant cruelty is obviously a disappointed idealist crying out for people to care for one another."
It takes a special kind of sadist, doesn't it, to troll Lebanese blogs and either lecture or gloat at the misery of people whose homes and families are under military attack?
What kind of sadist allows their patient to suffer through this kind of pain for two weeks, whilst prescribing 4 days supply of pain pills that have about as much effect as a flinstone vitamin!
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