/fɛm/
OriginBorrowed from French femme (“woman”). Doublet of feme, femina, and hembra.
- A woman, a wife; (now chiefly Canada, US) a young woman or girl.
“Then I turned to him and said, "O my lord, I have that to propose to thee wherein thou must not cross me; and this it is that, when we reach Baghdad, my native city, I offer thee my life as thy handma”
“Theodore J. Flicker and George Kirgo have penned a good script in which Elvis is played off against four femmes […].”
- A lesbian or other queer woman whose appearance, identity etc. is seen as feminine as opposed to butch.
“Some of the most political dykes in town had already converted, tossing out their Levi's and Birkenstocks in favor of poodle skirts and heels. It was no longer a question of butch vs. femme, liberatio”
“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?”
“Given the myth that lesbian femmes will eventually leave their butches for men, there is an understandable unwillingness to acknowledge bisexual femmes, who really might do it — as indeed they have ev”
- uncommonA person whose gender is feminine-leaning, such as a feminine non-binary person.
“The same is true of Goddess Spirituality spaces which are predicated on Radical Feminist rhetorics about Nature and the embodied experience – even those spaces which are open to trans women and nonbin”
“[…] 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.”
- Canada, USPertaining 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 onlo”
“High heels are something like neckties for women, in that it can be harder to look both formal and femme without them.”
- 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 […]”
Formsfemmes(plural) · more femme(comparative) · most femme(superlative)