Femininity

How to spell femininity

10 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce femininity

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does femininity mean?

1. nounThe qualities, behaviours, or appearance traditionally associated with women.

Femininity in a sentence

• The magazine ran a thoughtful essay on changing ideas of femininity.

• Her tailored suit blended authority with a quiet femininity.

Where does femininity come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin femina, which simply meant 'woman'. From femina came the adjective femininus, meaning 'of or belonging to a woman', and English took up the related adjective 'feminine' through Old French during the 1300s. The abstract noun 'femininity', naming the quality or condition of being feminine, was then formed in English by adding the noun-forming suffix -ity. The Latin femina is also the distant ancestor of words such as 'female' and 'effeminate', and it once carried no special judgement, describing womanhood in a neutral way. The spelling trap lives in the middle: the sequence fem-i-n-i-n-ity packs three short, unstressed vowels and a repeated -in-, so writers often drop a syllable and produce the incorrect 'feminity'.

How the word is built

• femin- (from Latin femina: woman)
• -in- (adjective-forming)
• -ity (noun suffix denoting a quality or state)