feminism

Definition

The state of being feminine; femininity.

Etymology

From French féminisme circa 1837, ultimately from Latin fēminīnus, from fēmina (“woman”). First recorded in English in 1851, originally meaning "the state of being feminine." Sense of "advocacy of women's rights" is from 1895.

Example Sentences

• "His hair is delicate and silky, and of a light chesnut[sic]—one of M. Lorrain's signs of feminism."
• "Women are still forbidden to smoke there... Ardent though we are in feminism, we applaud this stand..."
• "There are by now many feminisms (Tong, 1989; Humm, 1992). Alongside and often overlapping with older-identified distinctions between liberal, socialist, radical and cultural feminisms, for example (important as they are in their different accounts of sexual difference and gender power), are variously named black, third-world ethnic-minority feminisms, themselves far from homogenous."

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