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Gymtimidation appears to be a recent coniage meaning “the fear of working out in front of others.”

A 2017 entry in Urban Dictionary suggests that the term was coined by a famous operator of fitness centers but doesn’t provide any evidence. There are, however, earlier usage instances which don’t appear to be related to any operator.

Google Books don’t show any usage evidence.

Can anyone suggest when the expression was coined and possibly by whom?

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  • Possibly off-topic on ELU until accepted by a dictionary with a more stringent editorial policy than UD. Commented Jan 30, 2021 at 20:07
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    @EdwinAshworth - are neologisms off-topic on this site? Commented Jan 30, 2021 at 20:09
  • When a candidate gains acceptance, ie it is a word – a new word, neologism (OED has listed a lot of them. 'Selfie' and 'quidditch' are famous examples that have been accepted into the lexis) – they are fair game. This Guardian article gives 'gymtimidation' a thumbs-down. Commented Jan 30, 2021 at 20:29
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    "If a question asks about a recent neologism that thousands of other people can be shown to use, then it is on-topic."--from an answer by @EdwinAshworth quoting a non-authoritative comment by Mitch. The "thousands" is, of course, off-target. Who's counting? 'Gymtimidation' enjoyed a brief period of frequent use in the popular press from 2013-2019, and no doubt still features in spoken language. The prohibition here at ELU is not against neologisms per se, but against requests to make up new words. Also, dictionary appearances are not determinative of use but rather descriptive. Commented Jan 30, 2021 at 22:32
  • @EdwinAshworth And here I’d always thought that gymtimidation meaning “the gift of naked fear” was a genetically engineered frankenword created via the radical recombination of three distinct radices (ἔτῠμᾰ, etymons): ① Greek gymnos (γυμνός) meaning naked as in gymnosperm (γυμνόσπερμος) for “naked seed”; ② Latin timidus meaning fearful from timēre as in Virgil’s timeless “timeō Danaōs et dōna ferentīs” mouthed by Laocoön not Cassandra; and ③ Cajun dation from Latin datiō meaning gift as a term of art in Louisiana Civil Law via Law French “dation en paiement”. :) Commented Jan 31, 2021 at 18:06

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Relatively widespread use of 'gymtimidation' in the popular press, as represented by the corpus at newspapers.com, appears to have started 01 Apr 2013 (paywalled link) with an ad for Planet Fitness in Poughkeepsie Journal (Poughkeepsie, New York) 01 Apr 2013, p A1, col 4:

   NO         NO
GYMTIMIDATION    LUNKS

no gymtimidation, no lunks

The caveat is that the newspaper corpus I used to determine the extent of use is not comprehensive, although it is large. Searches in other relevant corpora at English-Corpora.org did not produce earlier use of 'gymtimidation'.

However, the earliest use of forms of the term in the popular press was in the (paywalled) Elko Daily Free Press (Elko, Nevada) of 23 Jul 2002, p 15 col 1:

All those who are gym-timidated need, says Dart, is a little guidance.

The appearances in the popular press suggest that the word was in widespread spoken use among gym users and operators before it appeared in print.

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  • So the evidence seems to undermine (but does not conclusively disprove) the claim, quoted in the question, that the term was deliberately 'coined by a famous operator of fitness centers'. Commented Jan 31, 2021 at 17:27
  • @jsw29, the claim at the link provided by OP was that the term was "developed" by Planet Fitness. No claim about coinage at any of the OP's links. PF, for it's part doesn't make any such claim, although they say PF "unveils the Judgement Free Zone® philosophy" in 1997. Any claim of coinage might rightly be contested, absent documentary evidence. Commented Feb 1, 2021 at 0:39
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The earliest use I can find is from a date not long before 27th December 2013 and appears in the article and in the accompanying video "Conquer your fear of the gym! Goodbye gymtimidation"

It is spoken by "Lorna", features editor at Cosmopolitan magazine close to the end of the video, which, one assumes, was filmed before the date of publication.

It seems to be a word that Lorna has coined.

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