femme

From French femme (“woman”). Compare feme.

• IPA^(key): /fɛm/

femme (plural femmes)

1. A woman, a wife; (now chiefly North American) a young woman or girl. [from 19th c.]
   • 1885, Richard Francis Burton, The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Night 18:

     Then I turned to him and said, "O my lord, I have that to propose to thee wherein thou must not cross me; and this it is that, when we reach Baghdad, my native city, I offer thee my life as thy handmaiden in holy matrimony, and thou shalt be to me baron and I will be femme to thee."

   • 1983, Variety's Film Reviews: 1964–1967:

     Theodore J. Flicker and George Kirgo have penned a good script in which Elvis is played off against four femmes […].

2. (LGBT, countable) A lesbian whose appearance, identity etc. is seen as feminine as opposed to butch. [from 20th c.]
   • 2013, Michelle Gibson, ‎Deborah Meem, Femme/Butch, p. 103:

     I love butches, though. I dated a femme once. That was wrong on so many levels.

• (LGBT): butch

femme (comparative more femme, superlative most femme)

1. (chiefly Canada, US, journalism, entertainment) Pertaining to a femme; feminine, female. [from 20th c.]
   • 2009, Jeff Apter, Fornication: The Red Hot Chili Peppers Story:

     Admittedly, Kiedis was concerned about the lack of femme rockers on the bill: the only women featured were in British band Lush, who would open each day's festivities before a few hundred curious onlookers.

   • 2019, Summer Brennan, The Guardian, 20 March:

     High heels are something like neckties for women, in that it can be harder to look both formal and femme without them.

2. (chiefly derogatory) Effeminate (of a man). [from 20th c.]
3. Characteristic of a feminine lesbian. [from 20th c.]

   Her style was more femme than butch.

• (LGBT): butch

• en femme

From Middle French femme, from Old French fame, femme, feme, from Latin fēmina, from Proto-Indo-European *dʰeh₁-m̥h₁n-éh₂ (“(the one) nursing, breastfeeding”), derivation of the verbal root *dʰeh₁(y)- (“to suck, suckle”). Various spellings such as feme, fame and fenme were used in Old French.

See cognates in regional languages in France: Norman fame, Gallo fame, Picard fanme, Bourguignon fonne, Franco-Provençal fèna, Occitan femna, Corsican femina.

• IPA^(key): /fam/

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• Rhymes: -am

femme f (plural femmes)

1. woman
   • 1868, Comte de Lautréamont, Les Chants de Maldoror

     Ta grandeur morale, image de l’infini, est immense comme la réflexion du philosophe, comme l’amour de la femme, comme la beauté divine de l’oiseau, comme les méditations du poète. Tu es plus beau que la nuit. Réponds-moi, océan, veux-tu être mon frère ?

     Your moral grandeur, image of infinity, is as vast as the philosopher's reflections, as woman's love, as the divine beauty of the bird, as the meditations of the poet. You are more beautiful than the night. Answer me, ocean, will you be my brother ?

2. wife
   • 1880, Émile Zola, Nana

     Ce fut le soir du mariage à l'église que le comte Muffat se présenta dans la chambre de sa femme, où il n'était pas entré depuis deux ans.

     It was on the night of the wedding at the church that Count Muffat appeared in his wife's bedroom, which he had not entered for two years past.

• épouse

• (female): homme
• (wife): mari
• (wife): époux

• femelle
• féminin
• femmelette

• Antillean Creole: fanm
• Guianese Creole: fanm
• Haitian Creole: fanm
• Karipúna Creole French: fam
• Louisiana Creole French: fam, fenm
• Seychellois Creole: fanm

• “femme” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

From Old French fame, femme, feme, from Latin femina, from Proto-Indo-European *dʰeh₁-m̥h₁n-éh₂ (“(the one) nursing, breastfeeding”), derivation of the verbal root *dʰeh₁(y)- (“to suck, suckle”). Various spellings such as feme, fame and fenme were used in Old French.

femme f (plural femmes)

1. wife
2. woman (female adult human being)

• (woman): dame

• French: femme
  • Antillean Creole: fanm
  • Guianese Creole: fanm
  • Haitian Creole: fanm
  • Karipúna Creole French: fam
  • Louisiana Creole French: fam, fenm
  • Seychellois Creole: fanm

• fâme, faume, faumme (Guernsey)
• foume (continental Normandy)
• fenme (Cotentin)

From Old French femme, feme, fame, fenme, from Latin fēmina, from Proto-Indo-European *dʰeh₁-m̥n-eh₂ (“who sucks”), derivation of the verbal root *dʰeh₁(y)- (“to suck, suckle”).

femme f (plural femmes)

1. (Jersey, France) wife
2. (Jersey, France) woman

femme f (oblique plural femmes, nominative singular femme, nominative plural femmes)

1. Alternative form of fame

Latin femina.

femme

1. woman

   en boune femme

   a good woman

• Pierre Rézeau, Le "Vocabulaire poitevin" (1808–1825) de Lubin Mauduyt: Édition critique (1994)