female

female, feminine

1. general.

Female is used as an adjective, contrasting with the etymologically unrelated word male, to designate the sex of humans and animals that can bear offspring and to designate plants that are fruit-bearing. Feminine is used only of humans and has two additional meanings: (1) denoting characteristics or qualities associated with women, and (2) contrasted with masculine and neuter, denoting a class of grammatical gender. Both words also have technical meanings in various domains. In broad terms female is used principally to indicate the sex of a person, animal or plant, whereas feminine is used of characteristics regarded as typical of women, i.e. beauty, gentleness, delicacy, softness, etc. See also womanly, womanish.

2. female as a noun.

Female has a long history in the meaning ‘a female person’; ‘a woman or girl’, but despite this several 19c usage guides advised against the use on the grounds that it was unsuitable to apply the same term to animals and human beings. The OED (in 1895) said of female used as a synonym for woman that ‘the simple use is now commonly avoided by good writers, except with contemptuous implication’. This observation holds good in our gender-sensitive age, and it would be difficult to contemplate female being used in this way without some degree of disparagement being intended or understood:

• He had no option now but to speak to his landlady in the morning about letting this homeless female have his bed for the night —M. J. Staples, 1992.

The use is best reserved for use in natural history and for occasions when a general or neutral term is needed (for example, in medical or other technical writing) to include both woman and girl, or to avoid the social distinctions still sometimes inherent in woman and lady:

• More than 55 females, from babies to elderly women, have been killed during the first year of the Uprising —Spare Rib, 1989

• We have found that females with male twins are significantly disadvantaged compared to those with female twins or compared to males with male twins —Daily Mail, 2007.