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The word female comes from the Latin femella, the diminutive form of femina, meaning "woman", by way of the Old French femelle. [7] It is not etymologically related to the word male , but in the late 14th century the English spelling was altered to parallel that of male .
The word woman can be used generally, to mean any female human, or specifically, to mean an adult female human as contrasted with girl. The word girl originally meant "young person of either sex" in English; [19] it was only around the beginning of the 16th century that it came to mean specifically a female child. [20]
The terms womyn and womxn have been criticized for being unnecessary or confusing neologisms, due to the uncommonness of mxn to describe men. [8] [9] [10]The word womyn has been criticized by transgender people [11] [12] due to its usage in trans-exclusionary radical feminist circles which exclude trans women from identifying into the category of "woman", particularly the term womyn-born womyn.
At that time, female genitals were regarded as incomplete male genitals, and the difference between the two was conceived as a matter of degree. In other words, there was a belief in a gradation of physical forms, or a spectrum. [139] Scholars such as Helen King, Joan Cadden, and Michael Stolberg have criticized this interpretation of history ...
The Anglo-Saxon word gerela meaning dress or clothing item also seems to have been used as a metonym in some sense. [1] Until the late 1400s, the word meant a child of either sex; it has meant 'female child' since about the late 15th century CE.
The word comes from Old English hlǣfdige; the first part of the word is a mutated form of hlāf, "loaf, bread", also seen in the corresponding hlāford, "lord".The second part is usually taken to be from the root dig-, "to knead", seen also in dough; the sense development from bread-kneader, or bread-maker, or bread-shaper, to the ordinary meaning, though not clearly to be traced historically ...
An alternative etymological explanation, which is commonly found on the internet, states that the name may have derived from the Arabic word for 'valley' or 'river' (wadi) and the Latin word lupus, meaning 'wolf'. Another possibility is that it comes from وادي الحب, wādī al-hubb, meaning "River of Love".
The words femininity and womanhood are first recorded in Chaucer around 1380. [ 10 ] [ 11 ] In 1949, French intellectual Simone de Beauvoir wrote that "no biological, psychological or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society" and "one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman". [ 12 ]