What does womenkind mean?
Womenkind is a collective noun meaning women as a whole, usually with attention to them as a social group, sex, or category. It refers collectively to women rather than to one particular woman and normally has no regular plural. The word is chiefly associated with British English and has an old-fashioned, literary, or broadly traditional register, although it remains perfectly intelligible in modern writing. In older texts, it is often used to make a sweeping generalization about women; in contemporary contexts, it may therefore sound period-specific, archaic, or occasionally patronizing, depending on the intended tone. Womenkind can be effective in historical narration, formal prose, or deliberately traditional language, although women or womankind will often sound more natural elsewhere. Its unusual second element preserves the older sense of kind as nature or sort, making the compound an instructive example of how vocabulary can retain older semantic patterns.
nounWomen collectively, especially all women regarded as a social group, sex, or category.
- Women collectively, especially all women regarded as a social group, sex, or category.
"In those days, people said that all womenkind must learn to sew."
"She was respected by all womenkind in the village."
"The novel portrays womenkind as a varied community rather than as a single social type."
Womenkind is normally used as a collective plural and generally requires no further inflection; plural womenkinds is occasionally used when referring to separate groups of women.
"Different womenkinds throughout the country responded to the appeal in different ways."
The strange second half of womenkind preserves an old meaning of kind: not family, but nature, character, or sort.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of womenkind
Womenkind is a Middle English compound formed from women and kind. Women derives from Old English wifman, a term for a female person, while kind here carries its older sense of nature, character, or sort rather than its familiar familial sense. The modern form is a close variant of the now especially common womankind.
How womenkind is actually used
Traditional, literary, or deliberately old-fashioned in style. It is not inherently pejorative, but its broad treatment of women as a homogeneous group can sound dated or occasionally patronizing in modern usage.
Easily confused with womenkind
Womankind is a close variant of womenkind rather than a word with a substantially different meaning; womenkind is especially associated with British and older usage, while womankind is more common in American and formal prose.