as in feminine
of, relating to, or marked by qualities traditionally associated with women
the novelist displays a womanly sensitivity to the characters' feelings
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Recent Examples of womanly
On the left: a photograph of a blurred womanly figure, her white dress smeared into an avian or angelic wingspan, her head eerily effaced, allowing the forest behind her to show sharply through.
—
Literary Hub, 1 Dec. 2025
Tarun would tease her, and my mother would look sorrowfully toward Kavitha, as if the two of them now shared some womanly burden.
—Madhuri Vijay, New Yorker, 16 Nov. 2025
McQuarrie’s feats lack the comic timing, composition, and emotionalism that cartoonist-director Brad Bird brought to the thrilling Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (Ethan/Tom spider-walking the Burj Khalifa skyscraper and outrunning a dust storm, Paula Patton’s womanly catfight with Léa Seydoux).
—Armond White, National Review, 23 May 2025
My favorite was the dystopian one featured in the tour’s promotional, majestically capturing a Black, womanly otherworldliness concomitant with her performance.
—Julian Randall, Essence, 9 Oct. 2024
See All Example Sentences for womanly
Literary Hub, 1 Dec. 2025
Tarun would tease her, and my mother would look sorrowfully toward Kavitha, as if the two of them now shared some womanly burden.
—Madhuri Vijay, New Yorker, 16 Nov. 2025
McQuarrie’s feats lack the comic timing, composition, and emotionalism that cartoonist-director Brad Bird brought to the thrilling Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (Ethan/Tom spider-walking the Burj Khalifa skyscraper and outrunning a dust storm, Paula Patton’s womanly catfight with Léa Seydoux).
—Armond White, National Review, 23 May 2025
My favorite was the dystopian one featured in the tour’s promotional, majestically capturing a Black, womanly otherworldliness concomitant with her performance.
—Julian Randall, Essence, 9 Oct. 2024
See All Example Sentences for womanly
Recent Examples of Synonyms for womanly
Adjective
-
Sybil, who spent her younger years beleaguered by the presence of her double, that emblem of feminine conformity named Désirée, never manages to perceive herself as anything but abnormal by comparison.—
Literary Hub,
Literary Hub,
9 June 2026
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But when Cox was bullied by her peers for acting too feminine, her teachers and mother blamed the abuse on her.—
Clare Mulroy,
USA Today,
9 June 2026
Adjective
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As an openly gay man, Hockney explored erotic themes, giving youthful male bodies the same tender scrutiny that artists had been giving the female nude for centuries.—
ABC News,
ABC News,
12 June 2026
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Several people involved in the show’s production, most notably Saito, were initially opposed, believing that the mainstream young female audience the series was supposed to court would respond poorly to anything other than a heterosexual pairing.—
Wilson Chapman,
IndieWire,
12 June 2026
Cite this Entry
“Womanly.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/womanly. Accessed 16 Jun. 2026.
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