fêmea

Meaning

Noun

female

Adj

feminine singular of fêmeo

Hyphenated as

fê‧me‧a

Gender

♀️ Feminine

Pronounced as (IPA)

/ˈfẽ.me.ɐ/

Etymology

From Old Galician-Portuguese femea, femẽa (“female”), from Latin fēmina (“woman, wife, female”), from Proto-Italic *fēmanā, from Proto-Indo-European *dʰeh₁-m̥n-eh₂ (“(f.) one who is sucked; one who suckles”), derivation of the verbal root *dʰeh₁(y)- (“to suck, suckle”).
Cognate with Galician femia, Spanish hembra, Occitan femna, French femme, Italian femmina and Romanian famen.