Talk:feminine

Etymology of feminine

I discovered an argument that "feminine" might instead come from "femur" meaning "thigh" (note its Latin plural was "femina", the same word for woman in Latin): http://www.europaic.com/Etymology%20of%20L.%20femina%20and%20L.%20fellare.htm

Instead, most sources say that "feminine" comes from "fellare", but the article linked above makes a good argument otherwise. Would it be prudent to include this alternative etymology? 130.85.58.236 21:12, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

RFV discussion: August–November 2013

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feminine

RFV of the adverb section. Perhaps I'm missing something obvious, but I can't think of how this could be used as an adverb (rather than an adjective), and so have a hard time searching for examples of use. google books:"moved feminine" turns up nothing relevant, compared to google books:"moved quickly". — This unsigned comment was added by -sche (talk • contribs).

The adverb is femininely surely? SpinningSpark 08:45, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

It's defined as an adjective too (of or pretaining to...) Mglovesfun (talk) 12:58, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

How is that relevant to the adverb sense? SpinningSpark 16:33, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Very. He’s talking about the adverb sense. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 16:42, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

google books:"behaving feminine" has enough hits. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 16:37, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

• ...the most feminine scoring group of males is an adverb on scoring.
• Martin looks the most feminine is an adverb on looks. SpinningSpark 17:57, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

• I can't see the last citation: is it saying Martin gazes at things in a most feminine way? Or is it saying that Martin seems feminine? Almost any adjective can be used with the latter sense of "looks". I can find examples of "Roger says nothing but looks obdurate", and even discussions of things that "look adjectival" and "look adverbial" (lol!).

  "Behaving feminine" ... well, I'll yield if others are convinced, but it seems to me that many adjectives can be used after "behaving", too: "behaving beautiful" gets a few pages of hits, "behaved dumb" gets a few, even "behaving contrarian" gets one. - -sche (discuss) 20:40, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

• The best illustration of how look functions here is to use an adverb-adjective pair to substitute for feminine, and see which one looks right: "Martin looks the most happy" vs. "Martin looks the most happily". The same goes for behave: "behaving happy" is a little unusual, but it works. If you try "behaving happily", the meaning shifts- it's another way of saying "behaving, and in a happy manner". As for "the most feminine scoring group of males": it doesn't help that it's suffering from Hyphen-Deficit Disorder, but imagine a test whose results range from "happy" to "sad", and compare "the most happy[-]scoring group of males" with "the most happily[-]scoring group of males". In all of these, we're dealing with stative constructions: the subject isn't doing, the subject is being. Chuck Entz (talk) 05:55, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

RFV-failed. - -sche (discuss) 08:13, 1 November 2013 (UTC)