female

1. 1.

   an animal that produces gametes (ova) that can be fertilized by male gametes (spermatozoa)

   Antonymsmale

   Broaderanimal

   Narrowerhendamfemale mammalfilly
2. 2.

   a person who belongs to the sex that can have babies

   Synonymsfemale person

   Antonymsmale

   Broaderperson

   Narrowerfemale offspringfemale childfoster-sistergirl wonderwoman

   Partsfemale body

Other forms of female

plural

females·

comparative

femaler·

superlative

femalest·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about female

What does female mean?

female means "being the sex (of plant or animal) that produces fertilizable gametes (ova) from which offspring develop". That is the primary sense; the word has 5 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in female?

female has 2 syllables: fema-le. The stress falls on "fema". In IPA it is /ˈfiˌmeɪl/.

What is another word for female?

Close synonyms include distaff, female person. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

What is the opposite of female?

The recorded antonyms are androgynous, male, male, male.

Is female a common word?

female is banded "Core" — among the few thousand words that carry most english. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.

What rhymes with female?

7 words rhyme with female. Rhymes are matched on the phonemes from the last stressed vowel onward, which is the definition a reader has in their head.