Feminism

How to spell feminism

8 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce feminism

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does feminism mean?

1. nounThe belief in and advocacy of political, economic, and social equality between women and men.

Feminism in a sentence

• Her thesis traced the history of feminism from the suffrage campaigns to the present day.

• The magazine ran a long feature on how feminism has shaped modern workplace policy.

Where does feminism come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word is built on the Latin femina, meaning simply 'a woman', combined with the suffix -ism that English uses to name a doctrine, belief system, or organised movement. The immediate parent is the French feminisme, which was popularised in the late nineteenth century to describe advocacy for women's rights and equality. English adopted the term in the 1890s, and it quickly settled into its modern political meaning. The same femina root sits inside the everyday words 'feminine' and 'female', which is worth remembering, since the spelling keeps that 'femin' core intact rather than the 'femen' that the unstressed second syllable can tempt a writer toward. Because the middle vowel is an unstressed schwa, the safest memory hook is to anchor the word to 'feminine' and then swap the ending for -ism.

How the word is built

• femin- (from Latin femina: woman)
• -ism (doctrine or movement)