feminine

/ˈfɛmənən/

/ˈfɛmɪnɪn/

Other forms: femininely; feminines

Feminine is the opposite of masculine. If it has anything to do with girls and women, it's considered feminine.

Anything feminine is associated with females. In American culture, that includes wearing pink, playing with dolls, sporting high heels, and getting weepy during sad movies. Many women find the traditional feminine roles to be sexist and limiting, while many men pick on each other for acting in a stereotypical feminine manner. But ideas about what is feminine are always changing: pants used to only be a masculine thing to wear, for example.

Definitions of feminine

1. adjective

   associated with women and not with men
   “feminine intuition”

   synonyms:

   female

   being the sex (of plant or animal) that produces fertilizable gametes (ova) from which offspring develop

   fair

   attractively feminine

   distaff, female

   characteristic of or peculiar to a woman

   maidenlike, maidenly

   befitting or characteristic of a maiden

   powder-puff

   used of competitive activities in which only women take part

   antonyms:

   masculine

   associated with men and not with women

   manful, manlike, manly

   possessing qualities befitting a man

   male

   being the sex (of plant or animal) that produces gametes (spermatozoa) that perform the fertilizing function in generation

   butch, macho

   markedly masculine in appearance or manner

   male, manful, manlike, manly, virile

   characteristic of a man

   mannish

   characteristic of a man as distinguished from a woman

   masculine

   of grammatical gender
2. adjective

   befitting or characteristic of a woman especially a mature woman
   synonyms: womanly

   matronly

   befitting or characteristic of a fully mature woman

   womanlike

   resembling a woman
3. adjective

   of grammatical gender
   antonyms:

   masculine

   of grammatical gender

   neuter

   of grammatical gender

   masculine

   associated with men and not with women
4. noun

   a gender that refers chiefly (but not exclusively) to females or to objects classified as female
   type of:

   gender, grammatical gender

   a grammatical category in inflected languages governing the agreement between nouns and pronouns and adjectives; in some languages it is quite arbitrary but in Indo-European languages it is usually based on sex or animateness
5. adjective

   (music or poetry) ending on an unaccented beat or syllable
   “a feminine ending”

   synonyms:

   unstressed

   not bearing a stress or accent