Definition of "female" []

• Of or denoting the sex that produces ova or bears young. (adjective)
• Characteristic of or appropriate to this sex; feminine. (adjective)
• Consisting of members of this sex. See Usage Note at lady. (adjective)
• Botany Designating an organ, such as a pistil or ovary, that functions in producing seeds after fertilization. (adjective)
• Botany Bearing pistils but not stamens; pistillate: female flowers. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "The privileges of a college were to be obtained, with the power of conferring the same degrees upon female students, as upon males -- forgetting, in their ardor, that the constitution of _female_"
• "IN behalf of true delicacy and womanliness, we would make an earnest protest against that quiet essence of national vulgarisms, the almost universal use of the term female as applied to woman."
• "In 1951 she sang the title female role in first complete recording of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess."