female
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
6 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "female", 6-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "female" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "female" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
female is anEnglishadj. It means: Belonging to the sex which typically produces eggs (ova), or to the gender which is typically associated with it. Pronounced /ˈfiː.meɪl/. It ranks #1,076 in English word frequency. Often confused with fetal and feral.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | female |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adj |
| IPA | /ˈfiː.meɪl/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #1,076 |
| Misspellings tracked | 8 |
| Confusable pairs | 9 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for female is 6 letters long, classified as anadj, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈfiː.meɪl/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,076 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 6 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 8 documented wrong-spelling variants for female, with forms such as "efmale", "feamle", and "femael". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 9 confusable-pair relationships, "fetal", "feral", "femme", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Etymology tree Proto-Italic *fēmanā Latin fēmina Proto-Indo-European *-lós Proto-Italic *-elos Latin -lus Latin fēmella Old French femelebor. Middle English femele Middle English female English female From Middle English female, an alteration of Middle Engl… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is female, spelled F-E-M-A-L-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Belonging to the sex which typically produces eggs (ova), or to the gender which is typically associated with it.
- 2Characteristic of this sex/gender. (Compare feminine, womanly.)
- 3Tending to lead to or regulate the development of sexual characteristics typical of this sex.
- 4Feminine; of the feminine grammatical gender.
- 5Lacking the F factor, and able to receive DNA from another bacterium which does have this factor (a male).
- 6Having an internal socket, as in a connector or pipe fitting.
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Italic *fēmanā Latin fēmina Proto-Indo-European *-lós Proto-Italic *-elos Latin -lus Latin fēmella Old French femelebor. Middle English femele Middle English female English female From Middle English female, an alteration of Middle English femele, from Old French femele, femelle (“female”), from Medieval Latin fēmella (“a female”), from Latin fēmella (“a girl, a young female, a young woman”), diminutive of fēmina (“a woman”). The English spelling and pronunciation were remodelled under the influence of male, which is otherwise not etymologically related. Contrast woman, which is etymologically built on man (as in, “person”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: efmale,feamle,femael,femalle,femlae,femmale,ffemale,fmeale
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for female
Misspelling Variants of "female"
Frequency rank: #1,076 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter F in our English index: