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What is a voyeur?
Voyeur is a fairly recent addition to English; our earliest written evidence for the word dates from the beginning of the 20th century. It comes directly from a French noun meaning, literally, “one who sees.”
Initially, voyeur referred to someone who derived sexual pleasure from watching others undress or engage in intimate acts; it was synonymous with Peeping Tom. By the middle of the 20th century, its meaning had broadened to "an unduly prying observer," particularly one interested in squalid or shocking details:
[A] good biographer is always in some sense a voyeur.–Times Literary Supplement, November 5, 1971
Is a press that pries into a presidential aspirant’s personal habits pandering to voyeurs or enlightening rightfully curious voters? –Saturday Review, February 16, 1980
Examples of voyeur in a Sentence
Jonathon Keats, Forbes.com, 28 Mar. 2025
Surveillance, meanwhile, comes with the territory: all six of the movie’s main characters are employed by Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre and thus are essentially professional voyeurs.
—Justin Chang, The New Yorker, 12 Mar. 2025
Imagine if one of his players had been rejected for a prom date — in front of all his buddies, with countless more voyeurs watching on TV.
—Tyler Kepner, The Athletic, 16 Jan. 2025
An audience is a voyeur who exists beyond the boundaries of time.
—Amy Nicholson, Los Angeles Times, 23 Jan. 2025
See All Example Sentences for voyeur
Cite this Entry
“Voyeur.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/voyeur. Accessed 8 Apr. 2025.
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