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Feminine   Listen
adjective
Feminine  adj.  
1.
Of or pertaining to a woman, or to women; characteristic of a woman; womanish; womanly. "Her letters are remarkably deficient in feminine ease and grace."
2.
Having the qualities of a woman; becoming or appropriate to the female sex; as, in a good sense, modest, graceful, affectionate, confiding; or, in a bad sense, weak, nerveless, timid, pleasure-loving, effeminate. "Her heavenly form Angelic, but more soft and feminine." "Ninus being esteemed no man of war at all, but altogether feminine, and subject to ease and delicacy."
Feminine rhyme. (Pros.) See Female rhyme, under Female, a.
Synonyms: See Female, a.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Feminine" Quotes from Famous Books



... But this passage of his opening speech is what I recollect best of him there: "Right reverend Fathers, date operam ut illa nefanda schisma eradicetur," exclaims Sigismund, intent on having the Bohemian schism well dealt with—which he reckons to be of the feminine gender. To which a cardinal mildly remarking, "Domine, schisma est generis neutrius (schisma is neuter, your Majesty)," Sigismund loftily replies: "Ego sum Rex Romanus et super grammaticam (I am King of the Romans, and above Grammar)!" For which reason I call him in my note-books Sigismund ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... 3. Ess is a feminine ending. A "maiden fortress" is a fortification which has never been taken. A fortress is a very ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins

... among men, the king; among weapons, the thunderbolt; among things which count, time; among animals, the lion; among purifiers, the wind. I am Death who seizes all: I am the birth of those who are to be. I am Fame, Fortune, Speech, Memory, Meditation, Perseverance and Patience among feminine words. I am the game of dice among things which deceive: I am splendor among things which are shining. Among tamers I am the rod; among means of victory I am polity; among mysteries I am silence, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various

... belongs to a studio inhabited by two Americans," continued the girl serenely, "and I often see them pass. They seem to need a great many models, mostly young and feminine—" ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers

... filled with articles of wearing apparel, delicately fringed things that delight the feminine heart, and keepsakes of all descriptions. Sanderson handled them carefully, but his search was not the less thorough on ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer

... sort; it was in those words that she characterised herself to Sanin. And at the same time this 'good fellow' walked by his side with feline grace, slightly bending towards him, and peeping into his face; and this 'good fellow' walked in the form of a young feminine creature, full of the tormenting, fiery, soft and seductive charm, of which—for the undoing of us poor weak sinful men—only Slav natures are possessed, and but few of them, and those never of pure Slav ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev

... sure of it, too," Elma answered, with the instinctive certainty of feminine conviction. "But still I know, for all that, he did it. Perhaps it was all done in a moment of haste. But at least he did it. And nothing on earth that anybody could say will ever make ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen

... ripeness and dignity of a sage, a mellow eloquence, and a large, noble discourse; the whole being tempered with the best grace and sensibility of womanhood. As intelligent as the strongest, she is at the same time as feminine as the weakest of her sex: she talks like a poet and a philosopher, yet, strange to say, she talks, for all the world, just like a woman. She is as full of pleasantry, too, and as merry "within the limit of becoming ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... a full stop, the two girls stepped out, while Lucile followed more slowly in their wake, conscious suddenly of dust-stained clothing and rumpled hair. "And I wanted to look my best," she wailed, in truly feminine despair. ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield

... Mercy, are alike pleasing and appropriate. There is a mixture of timidity and frankness in Mercy, which is as sweet in itself as it is artlessly and unconsciously drawn; and in Christiana we discover the very characteristics that can make the most lovely feminine counterpart, suitable to the stern and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... and turned his head away, lest he should laugh outright. Her reasoning—though he was not worldly enough to call it feminine, and though it scarce tallied with her argument—seemed to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... girls. He had worked hard all his life, there among those desert hills, and during the few years his father had allowed him for education. He knew wheat, but nothing of the eternal feminine. So it was impossible for him to grasp that this girl was not wholly at her ease. Her words and the cool little laugh suddenly brought home to Kurt the immeasurable distance between him and a daughter of one of the richest ranchers ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey

... the Rock Creek route without being amused and sometimes annoyed by the yellow-breasted chat. This bird also has something of the manners and build of the catbird, yet he is truly an original. The catbird is mild and feminine compared with this rollicking polyglot. His voice is very loud and strong and quite uncanny. No sooner have you penetrated his retreat, which is usually a thick undergrowth in low, wet localities, near the woods or in old fields, than he begins his serenade, which for the ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... that both of these plays had been devised before the author began to write them; and when he took his pen in hand he had already been working on them in scenario for probably a year. To write ten acts in Alexandrines, with feminine rhymes alternating with masculine, was still, to be sure, an appalling task; but Hugo was a facile and prolific poet, and could write very quickly after he had determined exactly what it was ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton

... received an immense impetus. With a "blue stocking" showing on the royal footstool, all the ladies of the Court would at least lay claim to a certain amount of learning. Dr Landmann has attributed the vogue of euphuism, at least in part, to feminine influences, but in so far as England shared that affectation with the other Courts of Europe, where the fair sex had not yet acquired such freedom as in England, we must not press the point too much in this direction. The importance in English literature of that "monstrous ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson

... air?" And when she ended by asking him, "Come to my house," he had followed her. But he had hardly entered when the past all came back to him, and he felt a stifled feeling of distress. Falling into a chair, he sobbed, burying his face in his hands. His grief was so violent that, by a feminine instinct of pity, the wretched creature took his head in her arms, saying, in a consoling tone, "There, cry, cry, it will do you good!" and rocked him like an infant. At last he disengaged himself from this caress, which made him ashamed of himself, and throwing ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... thought for what we shall put on. They say that nothing but the prevailing and forthcoming fashions fill the feminine mind. It is true sometimes, I daresay, and yet I always agree with our immortal bard in thinking that "Self-love is not so vile a ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren

... not capable of the iniquity of seduction. Your servant is not destitute of feminine and virtuous qualities; but she was taught that the best use of her charms consists in the sale of them. My nocturnal visits to Mettingen were now prompted by a double view, and my correspondence with your servant gave me, at all ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown

... posterity. They are a little wilder than sheep, but they do not snuff the air at the approach of human beings, nor evince much alarm at their pretty close proximity; although if you continue to advance, they toss their heads and take to their heels in a kind of mimic terror, or something akin to feminine skittishness, with a dim remembrance or tradition, as it were, of their having come of a wild stock. They have so long been fed and protected by man, that they must have lost many of their native instincts, and, I suppose, could not live comfortably through, even an English winter ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... can never be violated with impunity. Boys and girls are sent into the world in pretty equal proportions, and we were never intended to pile a lot of boys together without girls and largely without any feminine influence whatever. To do so is to insure moral disorder whether in our schools or yours. To quote from an excellent paper of Dr. Butler's: "In giving us sisters," says one of the Hares in Guesses at Truth, "God gave ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins

... notice that man always applies the feminine gender to anything unreliable in the way of machinery. If it's sober and steady-going, you label it masculine, like Big Ben. But if it's uncertain in action, like a motor-boat, you call it Fifi or Lolo ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg

... breaking through the prejudices of sex in this splendid instance!" exclaimed the lady. "The feminine star is in the ascendant. How much more illustrious the triumph! How greater the difficulty to express in visible types, the soft, subduing, humanizing graces of the female disposition, than to imprint the coarse outline of masculine strength! ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various

... cursed not only with consistent feminine longings and desires, but, in spite of my training and the examples around me, with a disinclination to be wholly vicious. Awhile ago marriage meant only more luxury and less worry about money. I never gave any ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson

... without any premonition, in one tremendous day. In one day there had come clamouring upon her, with an effect of revelation after revelation, the ideas of drugs, of heresy and blasphemy, of an alien feminine influence, of the entire moral and material breakdown of the man who had been the centre of her life. Never was the whole world of a woman so swiftly and comprehensively smashed. All the previous troubles of her life seemed infinitesimal in comparison with any single item ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells

... the middle of the stream, he could see a bathing place well enclosed by bamboo. He could hear, merry laughter and feminine accents coming from that direction. Still further down the stream he could see a bamboo bridge and some men in bathing. In the meantime, a multitude of servants were bustling about the improvised fireplaces, some engaged in plucking chickens, others ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal

... each ministry is a little town by itself, whence women are banished; but there is just as much detraction and scandal as though the feminine population were admitted there. At the end of three years, Monsieur Marneffe's position was perfectly clear and open to the day, and in every room one and another asked, "Is Marneffe to be, or not to be, Coquet's ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac

... berated the male sex and their inadequacy to great emergencies, and was offered by the complimented parties the privilege of engineering the train, an honor she respectfully declined. One day I was saluted by a voice, not sweetly feminine in tone, while an impetuous hand pitched, at me one of my own books. ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms

... striking of a match, and the pleasant twang of cigar-smoke greeted her nostrils. The two men seemed splendidly masculine, important, self-sufficient. The triviality of feminine atoms like herself, Rose, and Millicent, occurred to her almost as a new fact, and she ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett

... no answer, but only indicated with his eyes a feminine figure. It was a young girl of seventeen or eighteen, wearing a Russian dress, with her head bare and a little shawl flung carelessly on one shoulder; not a passenger, but I suppose a sister or daughter of the station-master. She was standing near the carriage window, talking ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... shadow of the open safe door, was a visiting-card, yellowed by age. I thought it blank at first; but on turning it over I saw some writing, faint and faded but legible, which had been penned by a feminine hand: ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk

... finding Lemuel in the reception-room, that he recoiled in dismay from the girlish figure that turned timidly from the window to meet him with a face thickly veiled. He was vexed, too; here, he knew from the mystery put on, was one of those cases of feminine trouble, real or unreal, which he most ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells

... Burnouf, in his Sanscrit Dictionary, at the word Maya, says: Maya, an architect of the Datyas; Maya (mas.), magician, prestidigitator; (fem.) illusion, prestige; Maya, the magic virtue of the gods, their power for producing all things; also the feminine or producing energy ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon

... the many days they had been together. Captain Davenport was an autocrat of the sea, fearing no man, never bridling his tongue, and now he found himself unable to curse in the presence of this old man with the feminine brown eyes and the voice of a dove. When he realized this, Captain Davenport experienced a distinct shock. This old man was merely the seed of McCoy, of McCoy of the BOUNTY, the mutineer fleeing from the hemp that waited him in England, the McCoy who was a power for evil in the early days ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London

... is in his noble disregard of consistency. "Do I contradict myself?" he asks somewhere; and then pat comes the answer, the best answer ever given in print, worthy of a sage, or rather of a woman: "Very well, then, I contradict myself!" with this addition, not so feminine and perhaps not altogether so satisfactory: "I am large - I contain multitudes." Life, as a matter of fact, partakes largely of the nature of tragedy. The gospel according to Whitman, even if it be not so logical, has this advantage ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... a slightly mocking accent, as though he had been asked to give her the moon. But now he was feeling a little angry with her for that feminine mobility that slips out of an emotion as easily as ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad

... the suggestion that he should write a poem in blank verse, which gave its origin to his most famous poem, The Task. Before it was pub., however, the intimacy had, apparently owing to some little feminine jealousies, been broken off. The Task was pub. in 1785, and met with immediate and distinguished success. Although not formally or professedly, it was, in fact, the beginning of an uprising against the classical school of poetry, ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... The Dakota women made coracles of buffalo hides, in which they transported themselves and their householdry, but the use of these and other craft seems to have been regarded as little better than a feminine weakness. Other tribes were better boatmen; for the Siouan Indian generally preferred land travel to journeying by water, and avoided the burden of vehicles by which his ever-varying movements in pursuit of game or in waylaying and evading ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee

... No man who is cautious would dream of trusting to an explanation of this kind simply because it explained one particular set of facts. Before you can possibly be safe in dealing with Nature—who is very properly made of the feminine gender, on account of the astonishing tricks which she plays upon her admirers!—I say before you can be safe in dealing with Nature, you must get two or three kinds of cross proofs, so as to make sure not only that your hypothesis fits ...
— Coral and Coral Reefs • Thomas H. Huxley

... was in waiting at the door under an old umbrella, exulted in his agonies, and bade fair to split his sides with laughing; while all this was passing, Miss Sally Brass, unmindful of the wet which dripped down upon her own feminine person and fair apparel, sat placidly behind the tea-board, erect and grizzly, contemplating the unhappiness of her brother with a mind at ease, and content, in her amiable disregard of self, to sit there all night, witnessing the torments which his avaricious and grovelling nature ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... maybe not just at first, but some day, almost before he realizes it, he finds himself whistling, and he is then well on the road toward a sane acceptance of the new conditions. I have found whittling to be as soothing to masculine nerves as knitting or crocheting to feminine ones. The ability to use the hands in some light work, removes the feeling of helplessness and enables the adult to keep his mind on his fingers; and this effort at concentration is often the means of preserving reason, and ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley

... ornaments of porcelain and alabaster, and a beautifully-carved vase of Parian marble stood in the centre, filled with brilliant flowers. A great mirror reflected back the room, and beneath it stood a toilet-table, strewn with jewels, laces, perfume-bottles, and an array of costly little feminine trifles such as ladies were as fond of two centuries ago as they are to-day. Evidently it was a lady's chamber; for in a recess near the window stood a great quaint carved bedstead, with curtains and snowy lace, looped back with golden arrows and scarlet ribbons. ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming

... his rifle as he uttered this very feminine exclamation, and shading his eyes, gazed before him ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn

... tumultuously at his feet, there was a stern and daring look that flashed from them, which denoted the ardor of an enthusiast. But this proud expression was softened by the lines of a mouth around which there played a suppressed archness, that partook of feminine beauty. His hair shone in the setting sun like ringlets of gold, as the air from the falls gently moved the rich curls from a forehead whose whiteness showed that exposure and heat alone had given their ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper

... considerable progress toward the end itself. Her emotions were various; but, curiously enough, almost the first had been a wave of passionate tenderness for William and her little girls. The shock of finding that arresting sign was now giving place to a purely feminine reaction. She considered for a moment the purchase of a bottle of hair coloring, then with a disdainful gesture dismissed such a temporary ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer

... the classical languages in point of accuracy. The three concords are more accurately observed in English than in either Greek or Latin. On the other hand, the extension of the familiar use of the masculine and feminine gender to objects of sense and abstract ideas as well as to men and animals no doubt lends a nameless grace to style which we have a difficulty in appreciating, and the possible variety in the order of words gives more flexibility and also a kind of dignity to the period. Of the ...
— Cratylus • Plato

... brain on fire. She had come to him, what joy! And then, how she had looked at him! She appeared to him more beautiful than he had ever seen her yet. Beautiful with a beauty which was wholly feminine and angelic, with a complete beauty which would have made Petrarch sing and Dante kneel. It seemed to him that he was floating free in the azure heavens. At the same time, he was horribly vexed because there ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... would be impossible. To tell how Mr. Pickwick in the first transports of emotion called Mr. Winkle 'Wretch!' how Mr. Tupman lay prostrate on the ground; and how Mr. Winkle knelt horror-stricken beside him; how Mr. Tupman called distractedly upon some feminine Christian name, and then opened first one eye, and then the other, and then fell back and shut them both—all this would be as difficult to describe in detail, as it would be to depict the gradual recovering of the unfortunate individual, the binding up of his arm ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... for a boy to learn is it not equally advisable for a girl to know, and vice versa? Will not such a policy create mutual sympathy between the sexes? The opponents of the co-education policy assert that it makes the girls masculine, and that it has a tendency to make the boys a little feminine. It cannot, however, be doubted that the system reduces the cost of education, such as the duplication of the teaching staff, laboratories, libraries, ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang

... to make his ruin altogether sure, to what are his supreme methods. He calls to his assistance once more the ally by whose help the great Amfortas had been vanquished. With mysterious passes and burning of gums, he summons that Formidable Feminine: "Nameless one!... Most ancient of Devils!... Rose of Hell!... Herodias!..." and amid the blue smoke-wreathes, uttering the wail of a slave haled to the market-place, rises the form of Kundry. She appears like one but half roused from the torpour of sleep, ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... must add that I personally have a considerably higher regard for Gieshuebler's white jabot, in spite of the fact that jabots are no longer worn, than I have for Crampas's red sapper whiskers. But I doubt if that is feminine taste." ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... supply this need, must create this atmosphere. We do not mean that the father does not share the responsibility of this, as of every other hour. But this particular duty is one requiring qualities which are more essentially feminine than masculine. It wants a light touch and an undertone to bring out the full harmony of the ideal home evening. It must not be a bore. It must not be empty; it must not be too much like preaching; it must not be wholly ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson

... reproof and entreaty only. All through its pages could be seen the romantic devotion of subject to sovereign, and the chivalric respect of a man for the woman whom he imagined to be possessed of all feminine virtues. ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene

... fames were the relics of seditions past; but they are no less, indeed, the preludes of seditions to come. Howsoever he noteth it right, that seditious tumults, and seditious fames, differ no more but as brother and sister, masculine and feminine; especially if it come to that, that the best actions of a state, and the most plausible, and which ought to give greatest contentment, are taken in ill sense, and traduced: for that shows the envy great, as Tacitus saith; conflata magna invidia, ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon

... It may be that in caprice and free-will she may find an answer to those two questions which stir her to her depths: What is she that God should so love her? and how comes she to be away from Him? Clothed in the body of either man or woman, the soul is predominantly feminine—the Feminine Principle beloved of, and returning to, the Eternal Masculine of God. Caprice is feminine; Caprice and Mystery are two enchanting sisters, and in Woman we see them as being irresistible to Man. Angels, though they are a glory of God's heaven, cannot alone satisfy all the needs ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley

... the wife of Seb and the mother of Osiris, Isis, Set, and Nephthys. Originally she was the personification of the sky, and represented the feminine principle which was active at the creation of the universe. According to an old view, Seb and Nut existed in the primeval watery abyss side by side with Shu and Tefnut; and later Seb became the earth and Nut the sky. These deities were supposed to unite every evening, and to remain ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge

... "I think the sex feminine has marriage on the brain," I exclaimed, somewhat heatedly. "My Aunt Jessica was worrying me about it the day before yesterday. As if it were any ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... and he could look into the big, ugly, familiar marble hall;—familiar still, and yet changed and strange, and even beautified; with new soft hangings, and Persian carpets, and flowers, and books, and bibelots about; with a new aspect of luxury and elegance; with a strange new atmosphere of feminine habitation, that went a little to Anthony's head, that called up clearer than ever the dark-haired, strenuous-faced woman of the dog-cart, and turned his imagination to visions and divinings of intimate feminine things. One thought of chiffons, and faint, ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland

... remember that there'll be no publicity to make either of you look small. You can have Peace with Honour, whatever you decide. [Listening] There they are! Now, Mother, don't be logical! It's so feminine. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... but literally worshipped; and she who is gifted with it is called Devi, as one revealing in herself Woman, the Divine. That this has not been a mere metaphor to us is because, in India, our mind is familiar with the idea of God in an eternal feminine aspect. Thus the Eastern woman, who is deeply aware in her heart of the sacredness of her mission, is a constant education to man. It has to be admitted that there are chances of such an influence failing to penetrate the callousness of ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore

... things of the kind between her and her husband, that for a short period he was in danger of falling into habits of movement and manipulation too dainty for a man, a fault happily none the less objectionable in the eyes of his instructress, that she, on her own part, carried the feminine a little beyond the limits of the natural. But here also she found him so readily set right, that she imagined she was going to do anything with him she pleased, and was not a little proud of her conquest, and the power she had over the young savage. ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... on ancient altars; Servius describes a shield dedicated on the Capitol to the Genius of Rome, with the inscription: GENIO URBIS ROMAE SIVE MAS SIVE FEMINA, "to the tutelary Genius of the city of Rome, whether masculine or feminine." The Palatine altar, of which I give an illustration, cannot fail to impress the student, on account of its connection with one of the leading events in history, the capture and burning of Rome by the Gauls, 390 ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani

... merely physical features, and among his principal associates excited no little appreciative comment upon this tendency. In some of his portraits of women of that period, wherein he evidently attempted to present the superior fineness and sensibility of the feminine nature, this effort toward ideality is quite strongly indicated; they are painted with a more hesitating and lingering touch than his portraits of men, and with a certain seeming lack of confidence, which throws about them a thin fold of that veil ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... up two ladies are discovered in the morning-room of Honeysuckle Lodge engaged in work of a feminine nature. Miss Alice Prendergast is doing something delicate with a crochet-hook, but it is obvious that her thoughts are far away. She sighs at intervals and occasionally lays down her work and presses ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne

... the flora the fauna. B is Life or Being, animal and human. Humanity appears; B is masculine, P feminine. P has also a meaning of division, differentiation or production, which may refer to maternity. ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell

... There are tones, there are glances, there are half-veiled allusions, there are—in a dog-cart, especially when it jolts—thrilling contacts of arm and arm. There is man's undisguised tribute to beauty; there is beauty's keen feminine appreciation of the tribute. There is a manner of saying "we" which counts for more than the ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke

... the withdrawing room, while searching for Antonia, he found that he had lighted on a feminine discussion; he would have beaten a retreat, of course, but it seemed too obvious that he was merely looking for his fiancee, so, sitting ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... the case. You must allow me to say that you take an exclusively feminine view of the matter, which, of course, is narrow. I have as much right to sell my brains to the highest bidder as my friend Vivian has to sell his pictures when he gets the chance—which ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... and snappy old gentleman clambered aboard the train that morning suddenly occurred to the station-master, only to be put aside in an instant; for it seemed impossible that he could have been an impostor. The girl, too, looked so natural, so feminine, so absolutely genuine, ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton

... woman's coffin may be known by the kettles and other feminine utensils about it. There is no distinction between the sexes in method of burial. On the outside of the coffin, figures are usually drawn in red ochre. Figures of fur animals usually indicate that the dead person was a good trapper; if seal or deer skin, his proficiency as a hunter; representation ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow

... to hear. "What say you—'God save Queen Jane?' I say, God save Queen Mary! I serve not my Lord of Northumberland, for all the Papists nick [give me the nick-name] me his spy! I have not proclaimed King John—whereof, as all men do know, Queen Jane is but the feminine. I am a servant of the Queen's Majesty that reigneth by right, and that Queen is Mary. God defend the right, ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt

... and, never having been to school nor mixed much with other girls of her own age, she was free from all those small, petty habits of mind, that littleness of mental vision that so mars and dwarfs the ordinary feminine character. ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross

... of the Hermana whom he had thrashed so well as to lay him up in bed? That incident had damaged two people at least, the unknown vanquished combatant in his bodily welfare, and me in my character as an upstanding man in the fierce feminine estimation of Miss La Heu; but this injury it was my intention to set right; my confession to the girl behind the counter was merely delayed. As I sat with Shakespeare open in my lap, I added to my store of reasoning one little new straw of argument in favor of my opinion that John Mayrant was ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister

... felt that there was some cause for embarrassment which he could not divine, tried to get up the conversation, and he started various subjects, but his useless efforts gave rise to no ideas and did not bring out a word. The Countess, with feminine tact and obeying her instincts of a woman of the world, tried to answer him two or three times, but in vain. She could not find words, in the perplexity of her mind, and her own voice almost frightened ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... walked to the table with a bold step; there was nothing now of the country lout about him; on the contrary, he moved with remarkable dignity, and bore himself so well that many a pair of feminine eyes watched him kindly, as he took his seat at ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy

... small garden in front. A primrose-coloured afterglow lingered in the sky, and the gas lights along the pavement still burned pale and white. Just as the Rhodes Scholar passed number 302 he saw a feminine figure run down the steps of a house fifty yards farther on, cross the pavement, and drop a letter into the red pillar box standing there. Even at that distance, he distinguished a lively slimness in the girlish outline that could ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley

... be feminine to say, yet I fear I must say, the women of Missouri have stormed their capitol, and if it is not yet taken, the outworks are in our hands, and I believe with a few more well-directed blows the victory will be ours. On February 3 a large ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... last kings before Billa (i.e. Billabahada) were Osamana, (i.e. Osaman; Osamana being the feminine gender,) Dawoloo, and Abass. Mr. Jackson says there was a King Woolo reigning in 1800; and a Moor who had come from Timbuctoo to Comassee ten years ago (viz. about 1807, or ten years before Mr. 482 Bowdich visited Ashantee), did not know ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny

... quite overcome to-day to find that you had vanished without a parting embrace to your "faded but fascinating" parent. [A fragment of feminine conversation overheard at the Dublin meeting of the British Association, 1878. "Oh, there comes Professor Huxley: faded, but still fascinating."] I clean forgot you were going to leave this peaceful village for the whirl ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley

... neighbors were to see her. She is fairly covered with rags—yes, rags! There are holes in her shoes; there never was such a bonnet worn since the time of the ark; and as for gloves, she disdains such an article of feminine attire altogether. I do not think one will have to wait long to come into possession of her fortune. But run up to your sister's room and greet old Miss ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey

... to be made in the form of personal adornment were necklaces: this may be easily understood, for in certain savage lands the necklace formed, and still forms, the chief feature in feminine attire. In this little treatise, however, we cannot deal with anything so primitive or so early; we must not even take time to consider the exquisite Greek and Roman jewelry. Amongst the earliest mediaeval jewels we will study the Anglo-Saxon and ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison

... of feminine hosiery designed to prevent the men from paying too much attention to the open-work, ...
— The Foolish Dictionary • Gideon Wurdz

... outlook; there came no hint of feebleness in resistance, too ready submission, or temperamental proneness to surrender; but her eyes, whether she wished it or not, still served as messengers between all that was feminine in her and all that was masculine outside her; and, with no reason not to tell the truth, they told it boldly, seeming to say, "Yes, once I had much to give, and I gave every single bit of it to one man. I have nothing left now for ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell

... small square of blue-green linen. Carefully pinned to it was a patch of white with a spray of delicate flowers outlined upon it, and a skein of pink silk thread. She had been initiated into the thrillingly absorbing feminine accomplishment of making sport handkerchiefs. When they left Eileen was included naturally, casually, spontaneously, in their invitation to Linda to run in any time she would. Mary Louise had said she would ride out with Donald in few days and see how the handkerchiefs were ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter

... and Dostoevsky could ever have quarrelled with a friend of so beautiful a character as Turgenev. Perhaps it was that there was something barbarous and brutal in each of them that was intolerant of his almost feminine refinement. They were both men of action in literature, militant, and by nature propagandist. And probably Turgenev was as impatient with the faults of their strength as they were with the faults of his weakness. He was a man whom it was ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd

... much confined to the higher classes, and there was little feeling for the sufferings of the common people. The reign of Edward the Third embraces the most brilliant days of chivalry. About that period is spread a mist of manly gallantry and feminine charms which conceals the darkness beneath. The Black Prince, after winning his spurs at Cressy, carried fire and sword among the peaceful and defenceless inhabitants of Garonne, gratifying a greed of gain by blood and rapine. The gallant deeds of Sir Walter de Manny, of Sir ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman

... would point out that some of the recent criticisms are exaggerated. The Gibraltar skull is estimated by Professor Sollas himself to have a capacity of about 1260; and his conclusion that it is an abnormal or feminine skull rests on no positive grounds. The Chapelle-aux-Saints skull ALONE is proved to have the high capacity of 1620; and it is as yet not much more than a supposition that the earlier skulls had been wrongly measured. But, further, the great ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe

... were of the beautiful straight Plantagenet type, and his complexion of purely fair rosiness, his large well-opened blue eyes full at once of frankness and keenness, and the short golden beard that fringed his square chin giving the manly air that otherwise might have seemed wanting to the feminine tinting of his regular lineaments. All caps were instantly doffed save the little bonnet with one drooping feather that covered his short, curled, yellow hair; and the Earl of Derby, who was at the head of Wolsey's retainers, made haste, bowing to the ground, to assure him that ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... about it he was good to look upon, with his steady eyes, the straight ultra-refined nose with slightly-distended nostrils, and a jaw which, in shape and strength, belied the almost feminine ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest

... Evadne merrily. "I am quite ready to become a vegetarian, if you will set me the example. The feminine mind, you know, is popularly supposed to be only fitted to follow ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black

... a feminine low laugh, Yet did not stay her dexterous hand: 'Now tell me of those days,' she said, 'When time ran golden ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti

... disappearance. On the afternoon of the Searle House rehearsal he had awaited Rose's coming in a state of extraordinary irritation. He expected a blushing fiancee, in a fool's paradise, asking by manner, if not by word, for his congratulations, and taking a decent feminine pleasure perhaps in the pang she might suspect in him. And he had already taken his pleasure in the ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... I perceive that the Species Of "Nonsense" you want must be purely "facetious;" And, as that is the case, you had best put to press Mr. Sotheby's tragedies now in M.S., Some Syrian Sally From common-place Gally, Or, if you prefer the bookmaking of women, Take a spick and span "Sketch" of your feminine He-Man.[115] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron

... intimate and confidential friend, had two terriers of the pepper-and-mustard breed, or rather, as we prefer him to any other character Sir Walter Scott has delighted us with, the Dandy Dinmont breed. These dogs (for we avoid the feminine appellation when we can) were strongly attached to their excellent master, and he to them. They were mother and daughter, and each produced a litter of puppies about the same time. Mr. Morritt was seriously ill at this period, and confined to his bed. Fond as these dogs were of their puppies, ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse

... and the idea of the tour is yours," said Mrs. Norton, very feminine and resigned, also feeling that my "cheek" deserved a tiny scratch. "I am pleased with whatever ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... Hepseba, in a surprisingly liquid and feminine voice. "I like both of them," an unexpected turn which brought a flush to the face of ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester

... to have you very much, indeed." She added to Tarrano, and there was on her face a look of feminine guile: ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings

... the storm, and displayed in their mien and looks high command and contempt of danger. She seemed at the moment taller than her usual size; and it was with a voice distinct and clearly heard, though not exceeding the delicacy of feminine tone, that the mutineers heard her address them. "How is this, my masters?" she said; and as she spoke, the bulky forms of the armed soldiers seemed to draw closer together, as if to escape her individual ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... a time contemplated the possibility of a union with that remarkable woman, pays her a high tribute in The Study of Sociology. After explaining the origin in women of the ability to distinguish quickly the passing feelings of those around, he says: "Ordinarily, this feminine faculty, showing itself in an aptitude for guessing the state of mind through the external signs, ends simply in intuitions formed without assignable reasons; but when, as happens in rare cases, there is joined with it ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch

... rather too strong on her face, but it is not a bad face. You may see her to-night at the —- Theatre, where she is the favorite. Not much of an actress, really, but very clever at winning over the dramatic critics of the great dailies who are but men, and not proof against feminine arts. This is her home, and an honest home, too. To be sure it would be better had she a mother or a brother, or husband—some recognized protector, who could save her from the "misfortune of living alone;" but this is Bleecker street, and she may live ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... jolt!" said Madison to himself. "I guess her trouble is one of those everlasting feminine kinks that all women since Adam's wife have patted themselves on the back over, because they think it's a dark veil of mystery that is beyond the acumen of brute man to understand. That's what the novelists write pages about—wade ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard

... the specific statement (Farvardin-Yasht, XXIII, 1) that "les fravashis tiennent en ordre l'enfant dans le sein de sa mere et l'enveloppent de sorte qu'il ne meurt pas" (op. cit., Soederblom, p. 41, note 1). The fravashi "nourishes and protects" (p. 57): it is "the nurse" (p. 58): it is always feminine (p. 58). It is in fact the placenta, and is also associated with the functions of the Great Mother. "Nous voyons dans fravashi une personification de la force vitale, conservee et exercee aussi apres la mort. ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith

... complicated by the individual differences due to the mental vehicle. The stallion supplies the vital qualities—the blood, i.e., the vivacity, brio, pace; physical resistance comes from the mare. To sum up, the modalities of matter are supplied by the feminine germ. ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal

... brigade commander in the great war. He had the brevet of brigadier general of volunteers, but repudiated any title beyond that of his actual rank in the regulars. He was that rara avis—a bachelor field officer, and a bird to be brought down if feminine witchery could do it. He was truthful, generous, high-minded, brave—a man who preferred to be of and with his subordinates rather than above them—to rule through affection and regard rather than the stern standard of command. He was gentle and courteous ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King

... done it long ago. I am so apathetic that I no longer take myself seriously. My successes do not please me; the idea of writing anything gives me anxiety. I have become less resisting, more sweet, more soft, I should almost like to say, more feminine. I became infatuated with a girl, simply because I knew that she hates all men. The inaccessible is still the only thing which can stimulate me somewhat. I have even written a poem on her, but nothing ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg

... such is the case. "Celebrity" rarely adds to the happiness of a woman, and almost as rarely increases her usefulness. The time and attention required to attain "celebrity," must, except under very peculiar circumstances, interfere with the faithful discharge of those feminine duties upon which the well-doing of society depends, and which shed so pure a halo around our English homes. Within these "homes" our heroes, statesmen, philosophers, men of letters, men of genius, receive their first impressions, ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various

... His wife writes novels which have a SLIGHT leaning toward Zolaism,—she is an extremely witty woman sarcastic, and cold-blooded enough to be a female Robespierre, yet, on the whole, amusing as a study of what curious nondescript forms the feminine nature can adopt unto itself, if it chooses. She has an immense respect for GENIUS,—mind, I say genius advisedly, because she really is one of those rare few who cannot endure mediocrity. Everything at her house is the best of its kind, and the people she entertains ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... unmanageable steeds they leap limitless chasms and the tallest of walls; they gallop to death in battle and dispel ennui in midnight conflicts with desperate poachers. Such scenes are quite within the scope of some feminine imaginations, but scarcely such a power of description as that wherewith we have them here set forth. Women thrill sometimes at fierce tales of stalwart knock-down struggles, many of them will back fearlessly the most mettlesome of thoroughbreds; but when ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... would not perhaps have vexed me so much—for I never entertained a very high opinion of feminine conscientiousness or scrupulosity—had she, when accepting me, been frank enough to admit that, whilst she was willing to do so, she entertained no very ardent sentiment of regard for me. But what inflicted an incurable wound ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood

... Pretext so kind My wakeful terrors could not blind. When in such tender tone, yet grave, Douglas a parting blessing gave, The tear that glistened in his eye Drowned not his purpose fixed and high. My soul, though feminine and weak, Can image his; e'en as the lake, Itself disturbed by slightest stroke. Reflects the invulnerable rock. He hears report of battle rife, He deems himself the cause of strife. I saw him redden when ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott



Words linked to "Feminine" :   distaff, fair, matronly, grammatical gender, female, neuter, womanly, maidenlike, femininity, feminineness, unstressed, gender, music, womanlike, unwomanly, maidenly, masculine, powder-puff



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