The Amorati

In 2002 I set out to describe a particular sort of man. For it seemed to me back then that we have a kind of lexical lacuna, a small gap in the language, and it bothered me for years. It is this: what word do we have for a man who loves women?

I don’t mean a man who pursues women, uses them, collects them, tries to conquer them, or boasts about those supposed conquests afterward. I mean a man who genuinely loves women. A man who delights in them. A man who is curious about them. A man who simply likes it when women are around.

What word do we have for him? What name do we give to a man who genuinely loves women — to the way he moves through the world, and to what he says and does differently from other men?

I searched for one. I rummaged through biographies and novels and dictionaries and old letters. I wandered down etymological rabbit holes and poked around in the dusty attics of language looking for a suitable term. Surely, I thought, someone must have named this archetype before now.

But no. Or at least not convincingly.

I can’t think of a single word that describes a man who loves women that is not slightly negative or derogatory. You can’t use lothario or playboy or ladies’ man or Don Juan or rake or philanderer or any other synonyms of these words, because they all carry the faint mildew of conquest, deception, or superficiality.

But what I wanted to describe was something entirely different, something noble and, dare I say, beautiful. Because our worthy gentleman, our archetypal man who truly loves women, is none of those things. He genuinely likes women. He observes them with affection. He is curious about who they are at heart, and who they are trying to become. He pays attention. He sees them; they feel seen.

Do you understand what this means? Because women sure do.

Strangely enough, our language seems to possess dozens of words for men who use women and almost none for men who admire them.

Thus. We need a new word. It seemed necessary to me to coin one.

I thought about this for a long time. Why not take a stab at it? Naturally, this was a terrible idea. And naturally, I proceeded immediately. And, at the risk of coming across as a little too precious or self-congratulatory, here’s my attempt.

I began by messing around with Greek and Latin roots for love and women, which is always dangerous. But there I was anyway, stealing a little from love, a little from Rome, a little from Ovid, and generally making a nuisance of myself among the ruins.

And the word I came up with is this: Amorati.

There it was. A name for the man I had been trying to describe. A man who loves women is an Amorati.

Whispers of literati, of amor, of Italianate romance. Lifted, kind of on a slant, from Ovid’s Ars Amatoria.

And derived, in no small measure, from what I was beginning to formulate all those years ago as my philosophy of beauty: the Ars Amorata.

Now then, if my little neologism is to pretend to Latin ancestry, the keen-eyed linguist may object that it does not follow the strict laws of Latin grammar. Perhaps not. But it follows the laws of the heart. A noble name for a maligned instinct; a little stolen Roman fire. And besides, it has a nice ring to it, a continental lilt.

There. Amorati is a good word. It sounds like a secret society, a brotherhood, a lineage. It has weight without solemnity. Until somebody comes along with a better word, let’s use that one.

So let it be written, so let it be done.

The Amorati. A man who loves women.