feminine
- pertaining to a woman or girl: feminine beauty; feminine dress.
- having qualities traditionally ascribed to women, as sensitivity or gentleness.
- effeminate; womanish: a man with a feminine walk.
- belonging to the female sex; female: feminine staff members.
- Grammar. noting or pertaining to that one of the three genders of Latin, Greek, German, etc., or one of the two genders of French, Spanish, Hebrew, etc., having among its members most nouns referring to females, as well as other nouns, as Latin stella “star,” or German Zeit “time.”
- the feminine gender.
- a noun or other element in or marking that gender.
Origin of feminine
Synonyms
See more synonyms for feminine on Thesaurus.comExamples from the Web for feminine
Contemporary Examples
All other issues—racial, feminine, even environmental—need to fit around this central objective.
These crimes of fashion proved the men were feminine and thus gay and therefore worthy of incarceration.
In Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen defends the novel against critics who dismiss it as frivolous and feminine.
“I had this feminine, classical image [of myself] that would have totally been destroyed,” she said.
Betty Friedan put the feelings of our mothers to words, publishing The Feminine Mystique.
Historical Examples
Simple Alleyne opened his eyes at this little spurt of feminine bitterness.
The White CompanyArthur Conan Doyle
Did she have a heart, then, or was it a feminine trait to turn pale in every emergency?
Chip, of the Flying UB. M. Bower
But dancing was the only feminine accomplishment with which she had any acquaintance.
Biographical StoriesNathaniel Hawthorne
"'Tis nothing," she answered, refusing his support with feminine reserve.
The Last of the MohicansJames Fenimore Cooper
His own nature partook of the feminine, and he shared its intuitions and its fears.
Tiverton TalesAlice Brown
feminine
- suitable to or characteristic of a womana feminine fashion
- possessing qualities or characteristics considered typical of or appropriate to a woman
- effeminate; womanish
- grammar
- denoting or belonging to a gender of nouns, occurring in many inflected languages, that includes all kinds of referents as well as some female animate referents
- (as noun)German Zeit ``time'' and Ehe ``marriage'' are feminines
Word Origin
Word Origin and History for feminine
adj.
mid-14c., "of the female sex," from Old French femenin (12c.) "feminine, female; with feminine qualities, effeminate," from Latin femininus "feminine" (in the grammatical sense at first), from femina "woman, female," literally "she who suckles," from root of felare "to suck, suckle" (see fecund). Sense of "woman-like, proper to or characteristic of women" is recorded from mid-15c.
The interplay of meanings now represented in female, feminine, and effeminate, and the attempt to make them clear and separate, has led to many coinages: feminitude (1878); feminile "feminine" (1640s); feminility "womanliness" (1838); femality (17c., "effeminacy;" 1754 "female nature"). Also feminality (1640s, "quality or state of being female"), from rare adjective feminal (late 14c.), from Old French feminal. And femineity "quality or state of being feminine," from Latin femineus "of a woman, pertaining to a woman."