Female

Female - (Webster's 1828 Dictionary)

FE'MALE, n. [L. femella. See Feminine.]

1. Among animals, one of that sex which conceives and brings forth young.

2. Among plants, that which produces fruit; that which bears the pistil and receives the pollen of the male flowers.

FE'MALE, a.

1. Noting the sex which produces young; not male; as a female bee.

2. Pertaining to females; as a female hand or heart; female tenderness.

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

3. Feminine; soft; delicate; weak.

Female rhymes, double rhymes, so called from the French, in which language they end in e feminine.

fe'-mal: Two Hebrew words are thus translated:

(1) neqebhah, which is merely a physiological description of the sexual characteristic (from naqabh, "to perforate"), and which corresponds to zakhar, "male" (see under the word).

(2) 'ishshah, with the irregular plural nashim (only Ge 7:2, in all other places "wife," "woman"), the feminine form of 'ish, "man."

The Greek word is thelus, literally, "the nursing one," "the one giving suck" (from thelazo, "to suckle").

Israelitic law seems frequently guilty of unjust partiality in favor of the male sex, but we have to consider that most of these legal and religious disabilities of women can be explained from the social conditions prevailing at the time of legislation. They are therefore found also in contemporaneous Gentilereligions. Though traces of this prejudice against the weaker sex are found in the New Testament, the religious discrimination between the sexes has practically ceased, as is evident from Ga 3:28: "There can be no male and female; for ye all are one man in Christ Jesus"; compare also 1Pe 3:7.

H. L. E. Luering