femme

noun \ ˈfem \

variants: or less commonly fem

|Updated on: 20 Jun 2018

Definition of femme

1 : woman 1a

2 : a lesbian who is notably or stereotypically feminine in appearance and manner

Recent Examples of femme from the Web

The leather daddies, the truck-driving lesbians, the genderqueers, the femmes; black, latino, Polish, Japanese.

— david tamarkin, Bon Appetit, "“I Think We Have a Gay Bar”," 6 June 2018
Her writing about butch-femme romance extends one hand back to the history of punk lesbian publishing (try Lorrie Sprecher’s Sister Safety Pin or the SM classic Coming to Power) and another forward, into the future.

— josephine livingstone, The New Republic, "The Big, Bad Truth of Michelle Tea," 16 May 2018
Unless femmes are visually or relationally validated by someone else who presents as masculine, they are treated as straight until proven otherwise.

— refinery29.com, "Why This Dear White People Lesbian Narrative Is So Important," 8 May 2018
Jayy Dodd Beauty, or the attempt to codify it in myself as a black femme, begins with a belief in something greater than this world.

— serena sonoma, Harper's BAZAAR, "How Black Trans Women Are Redefining Beauty Standards," 1 May 2018
Empowering black women and, or femmes is always central in my work and mothers are not an exclusion.

— monique judge, The Root, "Mamas Day 2018: Honoring Black Mamas’ Right to Parent," 13 May 2018
Her Le dejeuner sur l’herbe: Les trois femmes noires—a riff on Edouard Manet’s 1863 Le dejeuner sur l’herbe--features three reclining African-American women, all clothed in printed garments, unlike the nude woman who reclines in Manet’s painting.

— jane levere, Smithsonian, "What Happens When Art History Gets Refigured," 9 May 2018
In a quest to redefine this narrative, seven black transgender women and femmes open up to BAZAAR.com about their own perceptions of beauty.

— serena sonoma, Harper's BAZAAR, "How Black Trans Women Are Redefining Beauty Standards," 1 May 2018
But Stewart's back-in-the-day femme-fatale evening get-up and coquettish pose aren't really such a stretch for the entertaining queen.

— liana satenstein, Vogue, "Martha Stewart Reminds Us Of Her Modeling Roots in a Glamorous Throwback Instagram," 29 Mar. 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'femme.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.