femme – French noun declension

French noun forms of femme

Noun: femme
Gender: f Hyphenation:
Singular ffemme
Plural ffemmes

Sample Sentences

  • Ta grandeur morale, image de l’infini, est immense comme la réflexion du philosophe, comme l’amour de la femme, comme la beauté divine de l’oiseau, comme les méditations du poète. Tu es plus beau que la nuit. Réponds-moi, océan, veux-tu être mon frère ? (Your moral grandeur, image of infinity, is as vast as the philosopher's reflections, as woman's love, as the divine beauty of the bird, as the meditations of the poet. You are more beautiful than the night. Answer me, ocean, will you be my brother ?) [1868, Comte de Lautréamont, Les Chants de Maldoror:]
  • Ce fut le soir du mariage à l'église que le comte Muffat se présenta dans la chambre de sa femme, où il n'était pas entré depuis deux ans. (It was on the night of the wedding at the church that Count Muffat appeared in his wife's bedroom, which he had not entered for two years past.) [1880, Émile Zola, Nana:]
  • "[…] un couple qui fonctionne requiert des individus dichotomiques qu'il s'agisse d'un homme et d'une femme ou bien d'une butch et d'une femme", Lilian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth Century. [2001, Marie-Hélène Bourcier, Queer zones: politiques des identités sexuelles, des représentations et des savoirs:]

Etymology

1. Inherited from Middle French femme, from Old French fam(m)e, fem(m)e, fenme, from Latin fēmina, from Proto-Indo-European *dʰeh₁-m̥h₁n-éh₂ (“(the one) nursing, breastfeeding”), derivation of the verbal root *dʰeh₁(y)- (“to suck, suckle”). The Old French pronunciation was [fɛ̃mə], which then became [fãmə] through lowering of nasal vowels, finally [famə] in Middle French through denasalisation before /m/, /n/. Other words in which -e- is pronounced /a/ include couenne, solennel, and the adverbs in -emment.
2. See cognates in regional languages in France: Norman and Gallo fame; Picard fanme; Bourguignon fonne; Franco-Provençal fèna; Occitan femna; Corsican femina. See: Latin Nouns 'fēmina'.

Verbs referencing "femme"

English Nouns femme, French Nouns fem, Portuguese Nouns fêmea.

Translations