Chapter Fellable to Feme of F by Webster's Dictionary (1913 Edition)

1. Belonging to the sex which conceives and gives birth to young, or (in a wider sense) which produces ova; not male.

As patient as the female dove
When that her golden couplets are disclosed.

Shak.

2. Belonging to an individual of the female sex; characteristic of woman; feminine; as, female tenderness. "Female usurpation.'b8 Milton.

To the generous decision of a female mind, we owe the discovery of America.

Belknap.

3. (Bot.) Having pistils and no stamens; pistillate; or, in cryptogamous plants, capable of receiving fertilization.

Female rhymes(Pros.), double rhymes, or rhymes (called in French feminine rhymes because they end in e weak, or feminine) in which two syllables, an accented and an unaccented one, correspond at the end of each line.

A rhyme, in which the final syllables only agree (strain, complain) is called a male rhyme; one in which the two final syllables of each verse agree, the last being short is called female. Brande & C.

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Female screw, the spiral-threaded cavity into which another, or male, screw turns. Nicholson. — Female fern(Bot.), a common species of fern with large decompound fronds growing in many countries; lady fern.

The names male fern and female fern were anciently given to two common ferns; but it is now understood that neither has any sexual character.

Syn. — Female, Feminine. We apply female to the sex or individual, as opposed to male; also, to the distinctive belongings of women; as, female dress, female form, female character, etc.; feminine, to things appropriate to, or affected by, women; as, feminine studies, employments, accomplishments, etc. "Female applies to sex rather than gender, and is a physiological rather than a grammatical term. Feminine applies to gender rather than sex, and is grammatical rather than physiological." Latham.

Femalist
(Fe"mal*ist) n. A gallant. [Obs.]

Courting her smoothly like a femalist.

Marston.

Femalize
(Fe"mal*ize) v. t. To make, or to describe as, female or feminine. Shaftesbury.

Feme
(||Feme) n. [OF. feme, F. femme.] (Old Law) A woman. Burrill.

Feme covert (Law), a married woman. See Covert, a., 3. — Feme sole (Law), a single or unmarried woman; a woman who has never been married, or who has been divorced, or whose husband is dead. — Feme soletrader or merchant (Eng. Law), a married woman, who, by the custom of London, engages in business on her own account, inpendently of her husband.