What does femaleness mean?
Femaleness is the noun denoting the state or quality of being female — the property of belonging, biologically, to the sex that typically produces ova. Beyond this core meaning, the word is often used in scholarly, literary, and social discussion to refer more broadly to the experience or essence of being female, though careful writers distinguish such experiential or cultural matters from femininity, which concerns learned or socially expected traits. The term belongs largely to formal registers: it appears in biology, medicine, sociology, and gender studies far more often than in casual speech, where phrases like "being a woman" or "being female" are more natural. Its connotations are neutral and descriptive, though in cultural criticism it can carry exploratory or political weight. Etymologically it descends from "female," a Middle English borrowing whose Latin root also gave us "feminine" and related words.
nounThe state, quality, or condition of being female; the property of belonging to the sex that typically produces ova or bears offspring.
- The biological state or condition of being female.
- The qualities or essence attributed to being female, especially in literary, philosophical, or social discussion.
"The novel explores how the protagonist's sense of her own femaleness shifts across three decades."
"In many bird species, it is femaleness rather than maleness that carries the brighter plumage."
"Her writing returns again and again to what she calls the lived experience of femaleness."
Rarely used; the plural is grammatically valid but appears almost exclusively in theoretical or philosophical texts discussing multiple distinct conceptions of femaleness.
"The philosopher argued that different cultures recognize distinct femalenesses."
'Female' wasn't always spelled that way — for centuries English writers misspelled it as 'male' with an 'fe' prefix, as if it were just a variation of male.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of femaleness
Femaleness is formed by adding the noun-forming suffix -ness to "female." The word "female" came into Middle English in the fourteenth century from Old French, ultimately deriving from Latin femella, a diminutive of femina ("woman"). A persistent medieval spelling confusion merged it with the unrelated word "male" (from Latin masculus), producing the misleading modern form "fe-male." Cognates sharing the same Latin root include "feminine," "femininity," and "femme."
Related word forms
How femaleness is actually used
"Femaleness" is a relatively formal, somewhat academic term, common in biology, sociology, gender studies, and critical writing rather than everyday conversation. It is generally used descriptively rather than prescriptively, and in contemporary usage writers often distinguish carefully between biological femaleness and socially constructed femininity.
Easily confused with femaleness
While 'femaleness' refers simply and objectively to the biological state of being female, 'femininity' refers to culturally associated traits, behaviours, and appearances regarded as womanly.