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WIKTIONARY VIA KAIKKI / WIKTEXTRACT
Imported dictionary evidence
These are source reports, not reviewed *SET-U ancestry. A list of templates or numbered etymologies is not an ancestor chain. Scholarly disagreements remain in the original source text.
35,981 English word records · 45,491 etymology sections in this online subset
PARTIAL ENGLISH COVERAGE · FULL CORPUS REMAINS LOCALNo exact match for “Female” in this partial English subset. That does not mean the full research corpus—or linguistic scholarship—has no record. Check the original dictionary entry ↗
INDEPENDENT SOURCE LIBRARY
More sources for this spelling
These are spelling matches, not a claim of identical senses or agreement. Historical accounts retain their own editions and limits; none is automatically promoted into reviewed ancestry.
Browse the independently attributed sources →016
MODERN ENTRY POINTS
WORD DOSSIERS
noun and adjectiveexact headword
female
A sex-class term borrowed through French from Latin fēmella, a diminutive of fēmina, with its English spelling later remodeled under male.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗noun and adjectivecontrarian claim
dairy
Milk, milk products, or a place and enterprise devoted to them; historically built on the occupational word for a woman managing milk and food production.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗noundossier summary
girl
A female child or young woman; in Middle English the word could denote a child or young person of either sex.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗noun and adjectivecontrarian claim
male
A sex-class term borrowed through Anglo-French from Latin masculus, a diminutive formation on mās.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nouncontrarian claim
wife
A married woman in relation to a spouse; inherited from Old English wīf, whose historical field included woman more generally.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗nouncontrarian claim
woman
An adult female human being; historically a compound of Old English wīf, woman, and mann, human being or person.
OPEN THE FULL LINEAGE ↗0211
ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
●
Present-Day English / Indo-European
female
of or relating to the female sex; a female individual
- DATE
- 14th century–today
- MATCH
- exact historical form
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Proto-Germanic / Indo-European
*daigjōn-
female baker or servant
- DATE
- Proto-Germanic
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Proto-Indo-European / Indo-European
*dhē-mnā-
woman or nursing female formation
- DATE
- Proto-Indo-European suffixed reduced formation
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Old English / Indo-European
dǣge
female baker; female servant
- DATE
- Old English
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Old French / Indo-European
femele
female
- DATE
- Old French
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Middle English / Indo-European
femelle
female
- DATE
- Middle English
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Latin / Indo-European
fēmella
young female; female
- DATE
- Latin
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Latin / Indo-European
fēmina
woman; female
- DATE
- Latin
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Present-Day English / Indo-European
girl
female child; young woman
- DATE
- 14th century–today
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Present-Day English / Indo-European
woman
adult female human being
- DATE
- before the 12th century–today
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Old English / Indo-European
wīfman
woman; female person
- DATE
- Old English
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
0311
WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED
CLAIMS & DISPUTES
SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 7
resolvedestablishedexact word
Was female formed by adding fe- to male?
No. Female continues Latin fēmella through French; male only influenced its later English spelling.
resolvedestablishedexact word
Does the suckle root give the true modern definition of female?
No. It is a proposed comparative analysis of the Latin word’s deep formation, not a timeless or prescriptive definition of people.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Can Freund historically refer to a woman?
Yes. Grimm records older and contextual uses of the masculine noun for female referents. Grammatical gender and referent sex are not identical.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Did Middle English girl mean only a female child?
No. Girle could denote a child or young person of either sex and could even be specified as a boy.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Is lady simply the female form of lord?
No. The histories share hlāf, loaf, but hlǣfdige has a kneading element where hlāford has guardian.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Do male and female share one historical root?
No. They have different Latin ancestries. Their modern visual pairing comes partly from male reshaping female’s English spelling.
resolvedestablishedposition text
Did wife always mean only a female spouse?
No. Old English wīf and Middle English wif could mean woman as well as wife.
CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 4
RANK 114GRADE Aexact ranked word
Male changed female’s spelling, not its ancestry.
Female descends from Latin fēmella and fēmina through French; later English speakers remodeled its spelling under male.
RANK 113GRADE Aranked reveal
Man was a human word before adult male became its center of gravity.
Old English mann principally meant a human being or person, while wer and wīf could mark male and female.
RANK 122GRADE Aranked reveal
Girl could once refer to a boy.
Middle English girle could denote a child of either sex; later English narrowed it toward a female child or young woman.
RANK 132GRADE Aranked reveal
Dairy begins with a woman, then a baker, then dough.
The milk-production place is formed on deie, a woman managing milk, continuing Old English dǣge, female baker or servant, in the dough and shaping family.
042
BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES
SOURCES
051
FIRST USES & HISTORICAL OBJECTS
ATTESTATION WITNESSES
06
SEARCH IS DISCOVERY, NOT PROOF
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