femme
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /fɛm/
other: /fæm/
rhymes: -ɛm
homophone: fem
Forms: form: femmes
Etymology: Borrowed from French femme (“woman”). Doublet of feme, femina, and hembra.
Senses: examples: text: 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."
ref: 1885, Richard Francis Burton, The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Night 18:
text: Theodore J. Flicker and George Kirgo have penned a good script in which Elvis is played off against four femmes […].
ref: 1983, Variety's Film Reviews: 1964–1967:
glosses: A woman, a wife; (now chiefly Canada, US) a young woman or girl.
examples: text: Some of the most political dykes in town had already converted, tossing out their Levi's and Birkenstocks in favor of poodle skirts and heels. It was no longer a question of butch vs. femme, liberations vs. oppression. Clothes did not unmake the woman; clothes were just clothes.
ref: 1986 [1984], Armistead Maupin, Babycakes (Tales of the City), pages 64–65:
text: Monique whispered something to a butch sitting near her. The butch crossed the room and approached our table. “Hey,” she called to me. I didn't look up. “Hey, femme, you wanna dance with a real butch?”
ref: 1993, Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues, Los Angeles: Alyson Books, published 2003, →ISBN, page 32:
text: Given the myth that lesbian femmes will eventually leave their butches for men, there is an understandable unwillingness to acknowledge bisexual femmes, who really might do it — as indeed they have every right to.
ref: 1997, Bi Academic Intervention, Bisexual Imaginary: Representation, Identity, and Desire, A&C Black, →ISBN, page 207:
text: I love butches, though. I dated a femme once. That was wrong on so many levels.
ref: 2013, Michelle Gibson, Deborah Meem, Femme/Butch, page 103:
synonyms: word: fem
antonyms: butch
glosses: A lesbian or other queer woman whose appearance, identity etc. is seen as feminine as opposed to butch.
examples: text: The same is true of Goddess Spirituality spaces which are predicated on Radical Feminist rhetorics about Nature and the embodied experience – even those spaces which are open to trans women and nonbinary femmes may still fall back on language about the womb …
ref: 2018, Queer Magic: Power Beyond Boundaries (Lee Harrington, Tai Fenix Kulystin), page 79
text: […] there is no story of Black pain deeper than that of Black fat women and femmes. […]
¹ Gender expansive for women, femmes, and nonbinary folks.
ref: 2019, The Lemonade Reader: Beyoncé, Black Feminism and Spirituality (Kinitra D. Brooks, Kameelah L. Martin)
text: Jordan-Zachery offers two dominant scripts that are often written onto Black women's, femmes', and girls' bodies: The Ass and Strong Black Woman scripts.
ref: 2019, Black Girl Magic Beyond the Hashtag (Julia S. Jordan-Zachery, Duchess Harris), page 21
text: [...] and any person who might partake in feminine expression (cis and trans women and men, nonbinary femmes...).
ref: 2019, Kristen J. Sollee, Cat Call: Reclaiming the Feral Feminine, page xvii:
coordinate_terms: masc
glosses: A person whose gender is feminine-leaning, such as a feminine non-binary person.
Related terms: en femme