Female

Definitions

Female

A. adj. I. Belonging to the sex which bears offspring.
1. a. of human beings. In Law: heir, line female. Also predicatively.

II. Of or pertaining to those of this sex.
3. Composed or consisting of women, or of female animals or plants
4. a. Of or pertaining to a woman or women.

1823 F. CLISSOLD Ascent of Mont Blanc 22 note, Female intrepidity may finally surmount danger. 1868 B. CRACROFT Ess. II. 277 All this comes of a female instead of a masculine education.

b. Engaged in or exercised by women.

1884 Chr. World 19 June 453/1 Female suffrage was..contrary to the manifest order of nature.

5. Peculiar to or characteristic of womankind.

1632 LITHGOW Trav. III. 83, I..clothed him in a female habite. 1667 MILTON P.L. IX. 999 Fondly overcome with Femal charm. 1717 LADY M. W. MONTAGUE Lett. II. xlvii. 39 A true female spirit of contradiction. 1732 ARBUTHNOT Rules of Diet 258 Chesnuts are good in Female Weaknesses. 1855 THACKERAY Newcomes II. 210 'My-dearesting' each other with..female fervour. 1863 Sat. Rev. 385 These letters..Johnsonian in aim, and intensely female we do not mean feminine in style.

6. Womanish; effeminate; weakly. Obs.

1771 GOLDSM. Hist. Eng. II. 227 The king remained in his tent, awaiting the issue of the combat with female doubts and apprehensions.

III. Applied to various material and immaterial things, denoting simplicity, inferiority, weakness or the like.
7. a. Simple; plain, undisguised. b. Inferior.
1. A female animal: a. of lower animals
b. generally, including the human species.

1615 CROOKE Body of Man 272 The Female generateth in her selfe, the Male not in himselfe but in the Female. 1800 Med. Jrnl. IV. 320 The female of every animal in a state of parturition is possessed of a placenta, or substance analogous thereto. 1851 CARPENTER Man. Phys. (ed. 2) 503 Conception and Parturition, in the Human female.

2. A female person; a woman or girl. a. In express or consciously implied antithesis with male; esp. one of the female individuals in any class or enumeration comprising persons of both sexes.

1652 GAULE Magastrom. 243 Saturne did onely eate up his male children, not his females. 1818 CRUISE Digest (ed. 2) III. 355 The females..incapable of performing any military service
b. As a mere synonym for 'woman'. Freq. in phr. the female of the species.
The simple use is now commonly avoided by good writers, exc. with contemptuous implication.

1940 H. G. WELLS Babes in Darkling Wood II. i. 144 The female of the species..by the age of fifteen has a clearer sense of reality in these things than most men have to the doddering end of their days.