Female

a. and sb. Forms: 4–6 femelle, (4 femmale, -el), 5–6 femelle, (6 faemale), 5–7 femal(l(e, Sc. famell, (7 foemal), 4– female. [ME. femelle (14th c.), a. OF. femelle sb. fem. (= Pr. femela):—L. fēmella, dim. of fēmima woman.

  In class. L. femella occurs only with the sense ‘little woman’; but in popular Lat. it appears to have been used, like the equivalent mod.Ger. weibchen, to denote the female of any of the lower animals, and hence as a designation of the sex in general; cf. masculus, lit. ‘little man,’ but used already in class. Lat. both as sb. and adj. = ‘male.’ The Fr. word has always been chiefly a sb. (though a few instances occur of OF. and Pr. femel, med.L. femellus adj.); but from the earliest times it was often used in apposition with an epicene sb., thus becoming a quasi-adj., and in modern Fr. it is to some extent used as a genuine adj. (the form femelle serving for both grammatical genders). In Eng., on the other hand, the adjectival use is by far the more prominent: the feeling of the mod. lang. apprehends the sb. as an absolute use of the adj. In 14th c. the ending was confused with the adjectival suffix -el, -al; the present form female arises from association with male, with which it rimes in Barbour, c. 1375.]

  A.  adj.

  I.  Belonging to the sex which bears offspring.

  1.  a. of human beings. In Law: Heir, line female. Also predicatively.

1382.  Wyclif, Gen. i. 27. God made of nouȝt man to the ymage and his lickenes … maal and femaal he made hem of nouȝt.

14[?].  Black Bk. of Admiralty, II. 121. Heyres female.

c. 1425.  Wyntoun, Cron., IV. xix. 34.

c. 1440.  Promp. Parv., 154/2. Femelle, feminius.

1594.  Barnfield, Comfl. Chastitie, iv. Euerie faemale creature.

1609.  Skene, Reg. Maj., 59. Lands halden be frie Soccage, quhen heires male and famell baith persews.

1634.  Sir T. Herbert, Trav., 115. Twelue female beauties.

1671.  Milton, Samson, 710.

1818.  Cruise, Digest (ed. 2), IV. 394. As the word issue equally comprehends male and female children, an agreement to settle lands on the issue of the marriage, has been held to extend to daughters.

1828.  Scott, F. M. Perth, xxx. His female vassals.

1841.  Lane, Arab. Nts., I., note. White female slaves are kept by many men.

  b.  of animals; often = she-.

1388.  Wyclif, Hos. xiii. 8. As a femal bere, whanne the whelps ben rauyschid.

a. 1400.  Octouian, 310. A female ape.

1486.  Bk. St. Albans, E iij a.

a. 1500.  Colkelbie Sow, 850.

1552.  Huloet, Female dragon, dracena.

1667.  Milton, P. L., VII. 490.

1774.  Goldsm., Nat. Hist. (1776), VII. 298. He enclosed a female scorpion … in a glass vessel.

1870.  H. Cholmondeley-Pennell, Mod. Pract. Angler, 148. Female Salmon.

  absol.  c. 1320.  The Seuyn Sages, 3716.

1393.  Gower, Conf., II. 45.

1861.  Chaillu, Equat. Afr., xx. (ed. 2), 355. In both male and female the hair is found worn off the back.

  2.  transf. of plants, trees: a. When the sex is attributed only from some accident of habit, color, etc.; sometimes after L. femina.

1548.  Turner, Names of Herbes (1881), 12. The male [pympernel] hath a crimsin floure, and the female hath a blewe floure. Ibid. (1551), Herbal, I. (1568), C iij b. Pympernell is of .ij. kyndes: it that hath the blewe floure, is called the female.

1577.  B. Googe, Heresbach’s Husb., II. (1586), 102 b. The female Elmes … have no seede.

1578.  Lyte, Dodoens, III. lx. 400. Two kindes of Fernes … the male and female. Ibid., VI. li. 726. The wilde Cornell tree, is called … in Latin, Cornus fœmina: in Englishe, the female Cornel tree.

1590.  Shaks., Mids. N., IV. i. 48.

1726.  Leoni, trans. Alberti’s Archit., I. 27 a. The female Larch Tree … is almost of the Colour of Honey.

1788.  Russell, in Phil. Trans., LXXX. 275. The Female Bamboo … is distinguished by the largeness of its cavity from the male.

1846.  Ellis, Elgin Marb., I. 105. The female myrtle.

1870.  C. Kingsley, Letters from the Tropics, in Good Words, XI. 210/1. A male and female papaw, their stems some fifteen feet high, with a flat crown of mallow-like leaves, just beneath which, in the male, grew clusters of fragrant flowerets, in the female, clusters of unripe fruit.

1878–86.  Britten & Holland, Plant-n., 178. Female Hems. ‘Wild hemp.’

1879.  Prior, Plant-n., 78. Female-fern, of old writers, not the species now called Lady-fern, but the brake.

  b.  esp. in Female hemp = fimble-hemp: see FIMBLE sb.

1523, 1877.  [see CARL HEMP 1].

1577.  [see CARL HEMP 2]

  c.  Of the parts of a plant: Fruit-bearing; resulting in a new individual.

1791.  Gentl. Mag., 2/2. The ear … is the female part [of maize].

1846.  J. Baxter, Libr. Pract. Agric. (ed. 4), I. 118. The stamen … is called … the male part; the pistil, being the recipient, is called the female.

1882.  Vines, Sachs’ Bot., 897. The female cell or oosphere.

  d.  Of a blossom or flower: Having a pistil and no stamens; pistillate; fruit-bearing.

1796.  Withering, Brit. Plants (ed. 3), I. 188. In the Ribes alpinum, the male and female flowers are sometimes found on different plants.

1880.  Gray, Struct. Bot., vi. § 3. 190–1. Flowers are … Pistillate, or Female, when the pistils are present and the stamens absent.

1882.  The Garden, XXI. 11 March, 169/3. The abundance of little red-tipped female blossoms give promise of a good crop [of nuts].

  II.  Of or pertaining to those of this sex.

  3.  Composed or consisting of women, or of female animals or plants.

1552.  Huloet, Female, of the feminine sorte.

1631.  Widdowes, Nat. Philos. (ed. 2), 49. There be sexes of hearbes, as of other liuing things, some of which more helpe, namely, the Male or Female according to their kindes.

1659.  Hammond, On Ps. lxviii. 11. Annot. 333. All the women, all the female quire or congregation solemnly came out, and joyned in these songs of victory.

1667.  Milton, P. L., XI. 610.

1697.  Dryden, Virg. Georg., IV. 705.

1710–11.  Swift’s Lett. (1767) III. 111. They keep as good female company as I do male.

1772.  Ann. Reg., 261. An use of the term female sex … not altogether justified by usage.

  4.  Of or pertaining to a woman or women.

1635.  A. Stafford (title), The Femall Glory: or, the Life … of our blessed Lady.

1700.  Dryden, Ovid’s Metam., xii. 809.

1712–4.  Pope, Rape Lock, IV. 83.

1779–81.  Johnson, L. P., Pope, Wks. IV. 123. The whole detail of a female-day is here brought before us.

1812.  Byron, Ch. Har., I. lxviii.

1823.  F. Clissold, Ascent of Mont Blanc, 22, note. Mrs. and Miss Campbell. These ladies have shown how female intrepidity may finally surmount danger, where even the experience of guides may fail.

1868.  Cracroft, Ess., II. 277. All this comes of a female instead of a masculine education.

  b.  Engaged in or exercised by women.

a. 1690.  Rushw., Hist. Coll. (1721), V. 358. Serjeant Francis, and one Mr. Pulford were committed for encouraging this Female Riot.

1762.  J. Brown, Poetry & Mus., x. (1763), 180. Miriam … led the female Dance and Choir.

1776.  Gibbon, Decl. & F., I. 153. A female reign would have appeared an inexpiable prodigy.

1884.  Chr. World, 19 June, 453/1. Female suffrage was … contrary to the manifest order of nature.

  5.  Peculiar to or characteristic of womankind.

1632.  Lithgow, Trav., III. 83. I … clothed him in a female habite.

1667.  Milton, P. L., IX. 999.

1717.  Lady M. W. Montagu, Lett., II. xlvii. 39. I am more inclined, out of a true female spirit of contradiction, to tell you the falshood of a great part of what you find in authors.

1732.  Arbuthnot, Rules of Diet, 258. Chesnuts are good in Female Weaknesses, and afford a very good Nourishment.

1855.  Thackeray, Newcomes, II. 210. ‘My-dearesting’ each other with that female fervour which, cold men of the world as we are—not only chary of warm expressions of friendship, but averse to entertaining warm feelings at all—we surely must admire in persons of the inferior sex, whose loves grow up and reach the skies in a night.

1863.  The Saturday Review, XXXII. 21 March, 385/2. These letters … Johnsonian in aim, and intensely female—we do not mean feminine—in style.

  † 6.  Womanish; effeminate; weakly. Obs.

1593.  Shaks., Rich. II., III. ii. 114.

1594.  Marlowe & Nashe, Dido, IV. iii. I may not dure this female drudgery.

1631.  Lithgow, Trav., II. 65. I have heard them often demaund the English … what they did with such Leprous stuffe [Zante currents] … A question … worthy of such a female Traffike.

1676.  Dryden, Aureng-Zebe, IV. Wks. (1883), V. 263.

1725.  Pope, Odyss., I. 469.

1771.  Goldsm., Hist. Eng., II. 227. The king remained in his tent, awaiting the issue of the combat with female doubts and apprehensions.

  III.  Applied to various material and immaterial things, denoting simplicity, inferiority, weakness or the like.

  † 7.  a. Simple; plain, undisguised. b. Inferior.

1601.  B. Jonson, Poetaster, IV. i. To tell you the femall truth (which is the simple truth) ladies.

1649.  Blithe, Eng. Improv. Impr. (1652), 48. Where there can be a Male-Improvement offer not to the Common-Wealth a Female, and so you have as plain a description what Drayning is as I can give you.

  8.  Said of the inner layer of horn on a horse’s foot, or of bark on a tree.

1639.  T. de Gray, Compl. Horsem., 72. If the foot be bruised with the shoo, or that the femall horn be hurt.

1884.  Bower & Scott, De Bary’s Phaner., 557. In order to obtain cork for technical purposes, the almost useless superficially-formed layer (called the male) is removed from the stem…. A new periderm appears…. This periderm grows quicker than the external male cork, and is used technically as ‘female cork.’

  9.  Said of precious stones, on account of paleness or other accident of color. Cf. 2 a.

c. 1400.  Maundev. (1839), xiv. 158. Thei [the dyamandes] growen to gedre, male and femele.

1601.  Holland, Pliny, XXXVI. xvi. 587. That [loadstone] of Troas is blacke, and of the female sex, in which regard it is not of that vertue that others be. Ibid., XXXVII. vii. 617. The female Sandastres … carrie not such an ardent shew of fire, but are more pleasant to the eie, as beeing attractiue rather than burning.

1865.  Emanuel, Diamonds, 112. The ancients called sapphires male and female … the pale blue, approaching the white, [was] the female.

  † 10.  Female rime: = feminine rime; see FEMININE.

1581.  Sidney, Apol. Poetrie (Arb.), 71. The very ryme it selfe, the Italian cannot put in the last silable, by the French named the Masculine ryme, but still in the next to the last, which the French call the Female.

1666.  Dryden, Ann. Mirab., To Sir R. Howard. The Female Rhymes … are still in use amongst other Nations. Ibid. (1685), Albion and Albanus, Pref. Wks. (1883) VII. 234. The effeminacy of our pronunciation (a defect common to us and to the Danes), and our scarcity of female rhymes, have left the advantage of musical composition for songs, though not for recitative, to our neighbours.

  IV.  11. A distinctive term for that part of an instrument or contrivance which is adapted to receive the corresponding or male part.

a. 1856.  H. Miller, Paper, in O. R. Sandst. (1874), 342. The male half of the hinge belongs to the head, and the female half to the jaw.

1889.  Mayne’s Med. Voc., Female … the part of a double-limbed instrument which receives the male or corresponding part.

  b.  (See quot.)

1688.  R. Holme, Armoury, III. xii. 433/1. There is no difference between the male and female Trepan, but for the Pin in the middle which the female wants.

  c.  ‘Female gauge, an internal or bored gauge’ (Lockwood, 1888); ‘Female joint, the socket or faucet-piece of a spigot-and-faucet joint’ (Ogilv.); Female screw, socket, a circular hole or socket having a spiral thread adapted to receive the thread of the male screw.

1669.  Boyle, Contn. New Exp. II. (1682), 11. A Female Screw, to receive the Male-screw of the Stop-cock.

1703.  Moxon, Mech. Exerc., 106. Two Male Screws fitted into two Female Screws.

1839.  G. Bird, Nat. Philos., 72. To use the screw, a hollow spiral is carved in the inside of a block of wood or metal, termed the female screw; this hollow spiral must be of such a size as to admit the projecting thread of the first, or male screw.

1870.  Eng. Mech., 18 March, 653/1. A screw working in a female socket.

  B.  sb.

  1.  A female animal: a. of lower animals. Often in his female: his mate.

1377.  Langl., P. Pl., B. XI. 331. In euenynges also ȝe[de] males fro femeles.

1481.  Caxton, Mirrour of the World, II. xiv. 97. Another ylonde is in Irlonde which stondeth ferre in the see, where no wymmen may dwelle; and also byrdes that ben femalles may not abyde there.

1553.  Eden, Treat. Newe Ind. (Arb.), 15. The females [elephants] are of greater fiercenesse then the males, and of much greater strength to beare burdens: they are sometimes taken with madnes, declaring the same by theyr furious running.

1585.  J. B., trans. P. Viret’s Sch. Beastes, D iv. This bird [Halcion] loveth singularly his femal.

1697.  Dryden, Virg. Georg., III. 416.

1769.  J. Wallis, Nat. Hist. Northumb., I. xii. 410. A female, with a calf at her foot, is not to be approached without danger.

1847.  Marryat, Childr. N. Forest, iv. The stag was ever and anon raising up his head and snuffing the air as he looked round, evidently acting as a sentinel for the females.

1881.  Lubbock, Ants, Bees & Wasps, 8. The abdomen of the females sometimes increases in size.

  b.  generally, including the human species.

c. 1386.  Chaucer, Wife’s Prol., 122. To knowe a femel fro a male.

c. 1440.  Promp. Parv., 154/2. Femel, no male, femella.

1540.  Hyrde, trans. Vives’ Instr. Chr. Wom., II. ii. v j b. As sone as the man lokedde upon the femalle of his kynde, he beganne to loue her aboue all thynges.

1590.  Shaks., Com. Err., II. i. 24. Man … Are masters to their females, and their Lords.

1615.  Crooke, Body of Man, 272. The Female generateth in her selfe, the Male not in himselfe but in the Female.

1800.  Med. Jrnl., IV. 320. The female of every animal in a state of parturition is possessed of a placenta, or substance analogous thereto.

1851.  Carpenter, Man. Phys. (ed. 2), 503. The average length of time which elapses between Conception and Parturition, in the Human female, appears to be 280 days, or 40 weeks.

  2.  A female person; a woman or girl.

  a.  In express or consciously implied antithesis with male; esp. one of the female individuals in any class or enumeration comprising persons of both sexes.

c. 1315.  Shoreham, 44.

1375.  Barbour, Bruce, I. 59. Ther mycht succed na female.

1535.  Stewart, Cron. Scot., III. 139. Of king Williame the successioun did faill … bayth of famell and maill.

1649.  Bp. Hall, Cases Consc., IV. v. 436. If the like exorbitances of the other sexe were not meant to be comprehended, females should be lawlesse, and the law imperfect.

1652.  Gaule, Πῦς-μαντία, the Mag-astro-mancer, 243. Saturne did onely eate up his male children, not his females.

1818.  Cruise, Digest (ed. 2), III. 355. As to the females, all being equally incapable of performing any military service, there could be no reason for preferring the eldest.

1861.  Maine, Anc. Law, 159. The Scandinavian laws, harsh till lately to all females, are still remarkable for their severity to wives.

  b.  As a mere synonym for ‘woman.’

  Now commonly avoided by good writers, exc. with contemptuous implication.

c. 1380.  Wyclif, Sel. Wks., II. 408. Two femalis shulen be grynding at a queerne.

c. 1460.  Towneley Myst. (Surtees), 311. Of femellys a quantite here fynde I parte.

1590.  Shaks., Mids. N., III. ii. 441.

1632.  Lithgow, Trav., X. 478.

1713.  Steele, Guardian, No. 45, 2 May, ¶ 1. I would strictly recommend to my young females not to dally with men whose circumstances can support them against their falsehood, and have the fashion of a base self-interested world on their side.

1773.  Wilkes, Corr. (1805), IV. 141. Just putting on my hat, to attend the females to church.

1801.  Strutt, Sports & Past., IV. i. 263. Dancing is generally thought to be an essential part of a young female’s education.

1849.  E. E. Napier, Excurs. S. Africa, I. vii. 112. The ‘Totty’ of the present day: and his female, (for the creature can scarcely be dignified by the name of woman).

1865.  J. G. Bertram, The Harvest of the Sea (1873), 193. This [evisceration] is performed by females, hundreds of whom annually find well-paid occupation at the gutting-troughs.

1889.  Pall Mall G., 10 Aug., 7/2. They are no ladies. The only word good enough for them is the word of opprobrium—females.

  8.  attrib. in certain nonce-words, as female-bar, -foe; female-bane, transl. of Gr. θηλυφόνον aconite, lit. ‘a thing deadly to females.’

1599.  Shaks., Hen. V., I. ii. 42 Pharamond The founder of this Law, and Female Barre.

1601.  Holland, Pliny, II. 271. Others, for the reason before shewed, call it [Aconite] Theliphonon [marg. Femalbane].

c. 1645.  Howell, Lett. (1753), 445. A thousand such instances are not able to make me a misogenes, a female foe.