fem

Clipping of feminine

• IPA^(key): /fɛm/

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛm
• Homophone: femme

fem (plural fems)

1. (LGBTQ, uncommon) Synonym of femme.

   Antonym: butch

   • 2014, Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy, Madeline D. Davis, Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community, Routledge, →ISBN:

     Oral history gave them an opportunity to share their vision of the world across generations, while giving us a chance to imagine the pleasure and pain of daily life for butches and fems in an earlier period.

2. (colloquial, sometimes derogatory) A feminine or effeminate person.
   • 2014, D Shuckerow, Take off your masc: The hegemonic gay male's gender performance on Grindr, quoting someone on Grindr:

     "Versatile, but love to bottom [...] No divas or fems. Not homophobic at all, just my personal preference."

   • 2018, Luis Menéndez-Antuña, Thinking Sex with the Great Whore: Deviant Sexualities and Empire in the Book of Revelation, Routledge, →ISBN:

     [...] chasers looking for silver daddies, exec types for college jocks, straights for gays, fems for mascs, smooths for hairies, huskies for slims, blacks for Latinos, whites for Asians, straights for gays, white collars for blue collars, ...

fem (comparative more fem, superlative most fem)

1. (colloquial) Feminine, effeminate.

   Antonym: masc

2. (LGBTQ) Synonym of femme.

   Antonym: butch

   • 2007, Cameron McCarthy, Globalizing Cultural Studies: Ethnographic Interventions in Theory, Method, and Policy, Peter Lang, →ISBN, page 79:

     Dozens of queers, including female to male/male to female transsexuals, leathers, bears and bisexuals, butch and fem lesbians, […]

• EFM, EMF, MEF, emf

Inherited from Latin fimum.

• IPA^(key): (Central, Balearic, Valencia) [ˈfem]

fem m (plural fems)

1. dung
2. (chiefly in the plural) manure (animal excrement used as fertilizer)
3. (in the plural, especially Balearic) rubbish

   Synonym: escombraries

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

• (Balearic) feim (indicative), facem (subjunctive, imperative)

• IPA^(key): (Central) [ˈfɛm]
• IPA^(key): (Balearic) [ˈfəm]
• IPA^(key): (Valencia) [ˈfem]

fem

1. inflection of fer:
   1. first-person plural present indicative/subjunctive
   2. first-person plural imperative

• “fem”, in Diccionari de la llengua catalana [Dictionary of the Catalan Language] (in Catalan), second edition, Institute of Catalan Studies [Catalan: Institut d'Estudis Catalans], April 2007
• “fem”, in Gran Diccionari de la Llengua Catalana, Grup Enciclopèdia Catalana, 2025.
• “fem” in Diccionari normatiu valencià, Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua.
• “fem” in Diccionari català-valencià-balear, Antoni Maria Alcover and Francesc de Borja Moll, 1962.

From Old Norse fimm, from Proto-Germanic *fimf, from Proto-Indo-European *pénkʷe (“five”).

• IPA^(key): [ˈfɛmˀ]

fem

1. five

From Old Norse fimm, from Proto-Germanic *fimf. Cognate with Swedish fem.

fem

1. five

Borrowed from English femme, fem (with the rarer spelling borrowed to avoid ambiguity with French femme (“woman”)). English fem is itself from French femme.

• IPA^(key): /fɛm/

fem f (plural fems)

1. a femme (feminine queer woman) (contrast butch)
   • 2007, Wendy Delorme, Quatrième génération, Bernard Grasset, pages 23–24:

     Pour faire simple, une fem (prononcer « faime ») c'est une gouine qui n'a rien contre les jupes, les talons hauts, le vernis à ongles et le maquillage. […] On confond parfois les fems avec les lipstick lesbiennes, les charmantes saphiques éthérées comme on en a vu à la fin des années 90 dans les pubs Dior, Benetton et Versace. […] Les fems ont ça de différent des lipstick lesbiennes que notre féminité n'est pas un passe-droit pour d'intégrer, mais au contraire le drapeau de la subversion.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

From Old Norse fimm (“five”), from Proto-Germanic *fimf, ultimately from *pémpe, variant of Proto-Indo-European *pénkʷe.

• IPA^(key): /fɛm/

fem

1. five

• femte

• “fem” in The Bokmål Dictionary.

• fæmm (northern dialects)
• fimm (Setesdalsk)

From Old Norse fimm (“five”).

fem

1. five

• femmar
• femdel
• femkamp
• femkant
• tjuefem

• “fem” in The Nynorsk Dictionary.

• fim (Rumantsch Grischun)
• füm (Puter, Vallader)

From Latin fūmus.

fem m

1. (Sursilvan, Sutsilvan, Surmiran) smoke

From Old Norse fimm (“five”), from Proto-Germanic *fimf, ultimately from *pémpe, variant of Proto-Indo-European *pénkʷe.

• IPA^(key): /fɛm/

• Audio:

  (file)

fem

1. five

• noll, ett, två, tre, fyra, fem, sex, sju, åtta, nio, tio, elva, tolv

• fem in Svensk ordbok (SO)
• fem in Svenska Akademiens ordlista (SAOL)
• fem in Svenska Akademiens ordbok (SAOB)

Borrowed from English fermentation.

fem (nominative plural fems)

1. fermentation