femmina

Forms

femmina f (plural femmine, pejorative femminàccia, diminutive-derogatory femminèlla or femminétta or femminùccia (also, “timid/weak/irresolute man or boy, pussy”))^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin fēmina (“woman, female”).^[2][3][4][1] The double ⟨mm⟩ is the lengthening of the consonant that often follows the stressed vowel in words stressed on the third-last syllable, as Rohlfs describes it.^[2][5]

The same word is French femme, Occitan femna, Catalan fembra, Spanish hembra and Portuguese fêmea.^[3][6] In Romanian a derivative, Romanian famen, came to mean “eunuch”.^[6]

The Latin word was originally a middle present participle of the root Proto-Indo-European *dʰeh₁(y)- (“to suck, suckle”), so its first sense was “the one who nurses”.^[7][3][1] Wiktionary reconstructs it as Proto-Italic *fēmanā, from Proto-Indo-European *dʰeh₁-m̥h₁n-éh₂.^[1][7] The same root is found in Ancient Greek θῆσθαι (thêsthai, “to suck”) and in fēcundus (“fruitful”), fētus (“offspring”), fīlius (“son”) and fellō (“to suck”).^[7][8][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is the Ritmo di Sant'Alessio, a poem from the Marche of the second half of the 12th century.^[9] DELI dates the general sense, a being of the sex that bears young or lays eggs, to the Florentine texts of the 13th century, where a man is said to have died leaving no child, “neither male nor female” (maschio né femina).^[2][10] The sense “woman”, often slighting, is found before 1250 in Cielo d'Alcamo.^[2][4]

Semantic evolution

In Old Italian femmina was the ordinary word for a woman, and could also mean a wife or a woman servant; it was used of plants that resemble the females of animals as well.^[9][11] Its history is bound up with that of donna, which slowly pushed it back into the more conservative areas and registers.^[2] Today it is the neutral term for the sex of animals and plants, while used of a woman it is often disparaging or stresses her physical attractiveness.^[4][12]

From the 16th century it also names the hollow part of a device into which another part fits, beside maschio: Benvenuto Cellini uses it in this sense before 1571.^[2][11] Figuratively it can describe a weak or cowardly man.^[4]

Of the derivatives, femminile is recorded before 1294 in Guittone d'Arezzo, and femminismo and femminista (1896, 1897) are taken from French féminisme and féministe.^[2][3] The phrase eterno femminino renders Goethe's das Ewigweibliche from the end of Faust.^[2]

Timeline

• 1150–1200 – The Ritmo di Sant'Alessio from the Marche has the word.^[9]
• Before 1250 – Cielo d'Alcamo uses femmina for a woman.^[2][4]
• 13th century – The Florentine texts use it for the female sex in general.^[2]
• Before 1294 – Guittone d'Arezzo uses the adjective femminile.^[2][3]
• Before 1571 – Benvenuto Cellini uses femmina for the hollow part of a device.^[2]
• 1896 – Femminismo is recorded, from French.^[2][3]

Meanings

Noun

1. A female person; a girl or woman as opposed to a male, also after a noun like an adjective: È nata una femmina.^[4][12][1]
2. A female animal; after the name of an animal it is used like an invariable adjective: un gatto femmina.^[4][12]
3. (biology) An individual that produces only female gametes; in botany, a plant with pistils and no stamens.^[4][12][9]
4. A woman, often disparaging, or with stress on her looks and femininity.^[4][12]
5. (figurative, disparaging) A weak or cowardly man.^[4]
6. (technology) The hollow part of a device that receives a matching part (the maschio); also as an invariable adjective: una presa femmina.^[4][12]

Word family

• femminella
• femmineo
• femminile
• femminilità
• femminino
• femminismo
• femminista
• femminuccia
• femminetta
• effeminare
• effeminato
• effeminatezza
• femminarda
• femminesco

Related words

• fecondo
• feto
• figlio
• Latin femina
• French femme

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
3. ^ a b c d e f Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
5. ^ Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
7. ^ a b c de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b c d Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
10. ^ Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
11. ^ a b Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti
12. ^ a b c d e f Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier