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femme

noun
/fɛm/

Etymology

Borrowed from French femme (“woman”). Doublet of feme, femina, and hembra.

  1. borrowed from femme

Definitions

  1. A woman

    A woman; a wife; (now chiefly Canada, US) a young woman or girl.

    • Theodore J. Flicker and George Kirgo have penned a good script in which Elvis is played off against four femmes […].

  2. A lesbian or other queer woman whose appearance, identity etc. is seen as feminine as…

    A lesbian or other queer woman whose appearance, identity etc. is seen as feminine as opposed to butch.

    • Near-synonym: lipstick lesbian (sometimes differentiated)
    • 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?”

  3. A person whose gender is feminine-leaning, such as a feminine non-binary person.

    • […] 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.
    • 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.
  4. ›+ 3 more definitions

    1. Pertaining to a femme

      Pertaining to a femme; feminine, female.

      • Admittedly, Kiedis was concerned about the lack of femme rockers on the bill: the only women featured were in British band Lush, who would open each day's festivities before a few hundred curious onlookers.
      • High heels are something like neckties for women, in that it can be harder to look both formal and femme without them.

    2. Effeminate (of a man).

    3. Characteristic of a feminine lesbian or queer woman.

      • Her style was more femme than butch.
      • "We want to base our relationships on who we are now, not who we once were" says radical femme bisexual Linda Moore.
      • In comparison to butch bisexual women, it may be easier for femme bisexual women to locate male and female dating partners […]

The neighborhood

Derived

femby, Femme&M's, femmeness, femmephobia, femmephobic, femmer, femmeslash, femmy, futch, stem, stemme, transfemme, ultrafemme

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for femme. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA