pathic

From Latin pathicus, from Ancient Greek παθικός (pathikós), from πάθος (páthos, “suffering, feeling”), from πάσχω (páskhō, “I feel, I suffer”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈpæθɪk/

pathic (plural pathics)

1. (now literary) Synonym of bottom: a passive male partner in homosexual anal intercourse.
   • 1810, Lord Byron, letter (to Henry Drury), 3 May 1810:

     In England the vices in fashion are whoring & drinking, in Turkey, Sodomy & smoking, we prefer a girl and a bottle, they a pipe and pathic.

   • 1959: William Burroughs, Naked Lunch

     And enough of these gooey saints with a look of pathic dismay as if they getting fucked up the ass and try not to pay any mind.

   • 1975: Robertson Davies, World of Wonders

     But in those days I was Paul Dempster, who had been made to forget it and take a name from the side of a barn, and be the pathic of a perverted drug-taker.

   • 1976: Robert Nye, Falstaff

     Clermont (known to his friends as Cordelia) was a nancy, a pathic, a male varlet, a masculine whore.

pathic (comparative more pathic, superlative most pathic)

1. passive; suffering
2. Relating to disease.

• pathic in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.

• haptic, phatic