FEMININE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Feminine

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/fˈɛmənən/ Listen

adjective

Feminine adj.

1.

Of or pertaining to a woman, or to women; characteristic of a woman; womanish; womanly. "Her letters are remarkably deficient in feminine ease and grace."

2.

Having the qualities of a woman; becoming or appropriate to the female sex; as, in a good sense, modest, graceful, affectionate, confiding; or, in a bad sense, weak, nerveless, timid, pleasure-loving, effeminate. "Her heavenly form Angelic, but more soft and feminine." "Ninus being esteemed no man of war at all, but altogether feminine, and subject to ease and delicacy."

Feminine rhyme. (Pros.) See Female rhyme, under Female, a.

Synonyms: See Female, a.

noun

Feminine n.

1.

A woman. (Obs. or Colloq.) "They guide the feminines toward the palace."

2.

(Gram.) Any one of those words which are the appellations of females, or which have the terminations usually found in such words; as, actress, songstress, abbess, executrix. "There are but few true feminines in English."

See images of 'Feminine'

Etymology of 'Feminine'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Feminine" Quotes from Famous Books

... Her feminine instinct had been right. Now for the first time taken out of his shut-up nursery life, where he himself had been the principal object—where he had no playfellows and no companions save those he had been used to from infancy—removed from this, ...

— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... charged into the street, they heard behind them a wild feminine shriek, then a crash of pottery and glass, then silence, and an instant later the Ship ...

— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis

... half-past nine and ten; they retired very late, bidding their landlady wake them at eight-thirty. She would see to it that they were not aroused until ten. When they awoke and saw the time, they would jump out of bed, hurriedly dress and dash off like a shot, cursing the landlady. Then, when the feminine element of the house gave signs of life, every nook would echo with cries, discordant voices, conversations shouted from one bedchamber to another, and out of the rooms, their hands armed with the night-service, would come the landlady, one of Dona Violante's daughters, a tall, obese ...

— The Quest • Pio Baroja

... with the feminine character in one who possessed it in a simple but also at the same time grand and noble form. His own wife had enabled him to see into the depths of the real woman's nature, as in a bright mirror-like lake. He saw in her the true heroine who fought with weapons that were constantly unconquerable. ...

— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... three of us entered the house together. I remember the musty, warm, shut-in odour of the front room. I heard the faint cry of a child. The room was dim, with a single kerosene lamp, but I saw three women huddled by the stove, in which a new fire was blazing. Two looked up as we entered, with feminine instinct moving aside to hide ...

— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson

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