1. Original use in anthropology (late 1800s–mid 1900s)

• The term hypergamy first appears in sociological and anthropological studies of marriage systems.

• It described marrying up in caste or class, particularly in South Asian kinship structures (e.g., anuloma marriages).

• The term was strictly confined to marriage, not mating or sexual choice.

2. Mid-20th century sociology

• Sociologists expanded the term to marital patterns such as:

  • educational hypergamy

  • income hypergamy

• Still exclusively about marital unions, not dating or sex.

3. Evolutionary psychology (1980s–2000s)

• EP researchers discussed female preferences for resources, status, or dominance.

• But they did not originally use the term “hypergamy”—they spoke of mate preference, mate choice, or resource-acquisition preferences.

4. Misappropriation begins (2000s)

• Online writers and early Manosphere blogs began borrowing “hypergamy” from sociology, often incorrectly assuming it meant any form of women choosing the highest-status male.

• The nuance that the term is marriage-specific in origin was lost.

5. Pop-EP amplification (2010s–2020s)

• Popular accounts of EP (e.g., YouTubers, bloggers, “red-pill” forums) adopted “hypergamy” as a catch-all for non-marital female mating behavior.

• This created a disconnect between:

  • the literal etymology (marriage),

  • the academic use (marriage),

  • and the new pop-EP usage (sexual or romantic preference in any context).

• The result is a large-scale catachresis: a word misapplied to a domain to which it does not belong.

6. Why the mistake persists

• “Hypergamy” sounds more scientific than “preference for higher-status partners.”

• Very few people check etymology.

• The term gained memetic traction in online male-strategy communities.

7. Consequence

• A whole generation of EP enthusiasts now uses a marriage-only word to describe non-marital mating behavior, undermining clarity.