fêmea

Forms

fêmea f (plural fêmeas)^[1] Old Galician-Portuguese wrote femea and femẽa, with a tilde over the second vowel.^[2][3][1] Bluteau heads the word fémea.^[4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin fēmina (“woman; female”), written Old Galician-Portuguese femea in the oldest texts.^[5][2][1][6] Houaiss marks it as a word that came down by the popular route.^[5]

The same Latin word is Galician femia, Spanish hembra, Occitan femna, French femme and Italian femmina.^[7][1] The REW counts Romanian famen (“eunuch”) among the derivatives.^[7] In French and Catalan the word came to mean “woman”, and a diminutive took over the sense “female”.^[8]

The Latin noun goes back to *fēmanā, from a Proto-Indo-European participle meaning “(the one) nursing, breastfeeding”, Proto-Indo-European *dʰeh₁-m̥h₁n-eh₂, a derivative of the root *dʰeh₁(y)- (“to suck, suckle”).^[9][1] Latin fellō (“to suck”) and fīlius (“son”) come from the same root.^[10][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Lorenzo's earliest record is a charter of 1291, known from a copy of 1305, which lists “sheep and pigs, males and females” (ouelhas e porcos machos e femẽas).^[3] The Crónica Geral tells of one animal that gave birth to a male and another to a female (a hũa pariu macho et a outra femea), and the Miragres de Santiago use the word of a daughter: of two children, “one was a boy and the other a female”.^[3] The first sense is thus “female”, of animals and people, in contrast with macho.^[3]

Semantic evolution

Bluteau's dictionary (1712–1728) defines the word as the counterpart of the male in animals and in people, and already has a cabinet-makers' sense.^[4] Applied to women it took on contemptuous meanings: a coarse woman, a concubine, a prostitute.^[5][11][12] Craftsmen call fêmea the piece with a hole or groove into which its macho fits: the eye of a hook and eye, the socket of a hinge, the grooved board of a joint, the gudgeons of a rudder.^[5][13][14] Thieves' slang used it for a lock.^[15][16]

The word passed into Kabuverdianu as fémia.^[1]

Timeline

• 1291 – femẽas in a charter known from a copy of 1305.^[3]
• 14th century – Houaiss's and Cunha's date for fêmea;^[5][2] Cunha has femẽa in the 13th century.^[5][2]
• c. 1430 – femea in the Horto do Esposo (copied 1390–1437).^[17]
• 1569 – Cardoso's Portuguese–Latin dictionary renders femea by Latin faemina.^[18]
• 1573 – femeas in a private letter.^[19]
• 1611 – Barbosa lists Femea with the Latin adjectives femineus and femininus.^[20]
• 1712–1728 – Bluteau records a woodworking sense.^[4]
• 1899 – Figueiredo records the slang sense “lock”.^[15]

Meanings

Noun

1. A female animal: a fêmea do lobo.^[5][13][1]
2. (biology) An organism whose reproductive organs produce only female gametes.^[5][14]
3. (uncommon or pejorative) A woman; a sensual woman; a woman seen only as a breeder.^[5][13][16]
4. (pejorative) A concubine or mistress; a prostitute.^[5][12][16]
5. (technology) The part of a pair that has a hole, groove or hollow into which the other part, the macho, fits: the socket of a hinge, the eye of a hook and eye, the grooved board of a joint.^[5][16][14]
6. (nautical, in the plural) The gudgeons on the sternpost that hold the pintles of the rudder.^[5][13]
7. (Portugal, slang) A lock.^[11][16]

Adjective

1. Of the female sex: um gato fêmea.^[12][16]
2. Having a hole or hollow that receives a matching male part.^[16]

Related words

• macho
• feminino
• feminil
• Latin fēmina
• Galician femia
• Spanish hembra

Usage notes

As an adjective fêmea is usually invariable after a noun (um chimpanzé fêmea).^[12] The Portuguese Wiktionary also treats it as the feminine of a rare adjective fêmeo, which the REW lists as a Portuguese derivative of the Latin noun meaning “female; effeminate”.^[21][7]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. fêmea
3. ^ a b c d e Instituto da Lingua Galega, Dicionario de dicionarios do galego medieval (DDGM), ed. Ernesto González Seoane, Santiago de Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, https://ilg.usc.gal/ddgm, p. s.v. femea
4. ^ a b c Bluteau, Raphael (1712–1728), Vocabulario portuguez e latino, 8 vols. + 2 supplement vols., Coimbra / Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. femea
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. fêmea
6. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. fêmea
7. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 3239
8. ^ Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 340
9. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. fēmina
11. ^ a b Aulete, Francisco Júlio Caldas, Dicionário contemporâneo da língua portuguesa (1st ed. 1881), online as Aulete Digital, Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, https://aulete.com.br, p. s.v. fêmea
12. ^ a b c d Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. fêmea
13. ^ a b c d Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. fêmea
14. ^ a b c Michaelis: Moderno Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, São Paulo: Melhoramentos (online as Michaelis Dicionário Brasileiro da Língua Portuguesa, https://michaelis.uol.com.br), p. s.v. fêmea
15. ^ a b Figueiredo, Cândido de (1899), Novo diccionário da língua portuguesa, 1st ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Tavares Cardoso & Irmão, p. 606
16. ^ a b c d e f g Academia das Ciências de Lisboa, Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, revised online edition (2023–) of the Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa Contemporânea (2001), https://dicionario.acad-ciencias.pt, p. s.v. fêmea
17. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. femea
18. ^ Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. femea
19. ^ CLUL (ed.) (2014), P.S. Post Scriptum: Arquivo Digital de Escrita Quotidiana em Portugal e Espanha na Época Moderna, Lisboa: Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, http://ps.clul.ul.pt, p. s.v. fêmea
20. ^ Barbosa, Agostinho (1611), Dictionarium lusitanicolatinum, Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. femea
21. ^ Wikcionário (Portuguese Wiktionary), pt.wiktionary.org, p. s.v. fêmea