How the Misuse Spread: A Brief Historical Outline

Anthropology (late 19th–early 20th century)

• The term hypergamy originally emerges in anthropological research on marriage systems.

• It describes marrying upward in caste or class hierarchies, especially in South Asian kinship structures.

• It applies exclusively to marriage, not sexual behavior, not dating, not mate preference.

Sociology (mid-20th century)

• The term expands to describe marital unions such as:

  • educational hypergamy

  • income hypergamy

• Again: strictly marital.

Early Evolutionary Psychology (1980s–2000s)

• Researchers studied female mate preferences for resources, status, dominance, and protection, but:

• They did not use the word “hypergamy.”
  Instead, they described mate choice or resource-acquisition preferences.

Online Manosphere and Pop-EP (2000s–2010s)

• Bloggers and early “red-pill” communities encountered the word hypergamy in sociological texts and misinterpreted it as meaning:

  “Women always prefer the highest-status man.”

• The marriage-specific nature of the term was lost.

• The term spread memetically through:

  • blogs

  • forums

  • YouTube commentary

  • popular EP explainers

The Result

A term that had always meant “marrying upward” was suddenly being used to describe non-marital mating and sexual behavior, creating a large-scale conceptual mistake.

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Why This Is a Linguistic Error: The Catachresis Problem

This widespread misuse is an example of catachresis—using a word in a way that contradicts its actual meaning or domain.

The root problem is etymological:

• Hypergamy derives from Greek gamos = marriage.

• It does not refer to sexual choice.

• It does not refer to attraction.

• It does not refer to dating, hookups, or general mate preference.

Using a marriage-specific term to describe general sexual or romantic behavior is a category mistake. It is like trying to describe casual sex with the word “matrimony” ; the semantic field simply does not match.

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What Hypergamy Actually Means

Hypergamy = hyper + gamos

• hyper- = upward

• gamos = marriage

The literal meaning is:

“Upward marriage.”

Historically, academically, and etymologically, this term belongs to:

• caste-marriage systems

• class-based marital mobility

• formal marital unions

• sociological studies of marriage patterns

It does not belong to:

• dating

• short-term mating

• hookups

• sexual attraction

• romantic preference

• evolutionary mate choice contexts

The modern evolutionary-psychology usage is therefore incorrect.

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What Evolutionary Psychology Actually Describes

Evolutionary psychology does not focus primarily on marriage, but on mating strategies:

• short-term mating

• long-term mating

• sexual preferences

• romantic attraction

• mate competition

• extra-pair mating

• resource-based selection

These behaviors are much older than marriage, which is a relatively recent cultural institution.

So EP is fundamentally describing mate choice, not marriage choices.

The everyday statement:

“Women prefer the highest-status man available.”

…describes a mating preference, not a marriage rule.

Thus the term “hypergamy” is inappropriate for EP’s purposes.

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The Correct Word: Hypergyny

If we need a term to describe female upward mate preferences across all relational contexts—sexual, romantic, or marital—then we need a term built from the correct root.

That term already exists: hypergyny.

Hyper– + gyne (woman)

• gyne = woman

• NOT marriage

• Unlike gamos, it has no marital connotation.

Literal meaning:

“A woman moving upward.”

Hypergyny therefore correctly refers to:

• any upward-directed female mate preference

• attraction to higher-status or higher-resource males

• upward selection in dating, mating, romance, or sex

It describes the very thing EP commentators mean without importing the erroneous assumption of marriage.

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Comparison Table

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Conclusion

The modern discourse on female mating strategies has been built on a linguistic mistake.

• Hypergamy has always meant upward marriage.

• Evolutionary psychology is about mate choice, not marriage systems.

• The popular EP usage of “hypergamy” is therefore a misuse, a category error, and a clear case of catachresis.

The scientifically and linguistically correct term is:

Hypergyny

—female upward mate preference across all sexual and romantic contexts.

Correcting this terminology not only improves clarity but also prevents the confusion that occurs when marriage-specific words are used to describe non-marital mating behavior.