Definition
Of or pertaining to females or the female sex. In legal usage, "feminine" functions primarily as a rule of statutory and textual construction: where a word, term, or designation in a legal instrument is grammatically or expressly feminine in form, it is generally understood to refer to females and may not extend to males unless context or legislative intent indicates otherwise. The principle operates in both directions — masculine terms may or may not include females depending on applicable construction rules, and feminine terms are typically confined to female referents.
The operative legal significance of the term is less about definition and more about interpretive consequence: the gender of a word in a deed, will, or statute can determine who takes, who qualifies, and who is bound.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Of or pertaining to the female gender or sex; having qualities stereotypically associated with women; also, in grammar, belonging to the feminine grammatical gender class.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Of or pertaining to a woman or to women; characteristic of a woman; womanish; having qualities becoming or appropriate to the female sex, as modesty, grace, or affection; also used pejoratively to mean weak or effeminate.
The gap between common and legal meaning here is one of scope and function. In ordinary language, "feminine" carries cultural and descriptive weight — it invokes stereotypes, aesthetics, and social roles. In law, the term is stripped of those connotations and reduced to a narrow classificatory function: it signals female sex for purposes of determining who a legal instrument covers. The social valence of "womanish" or "nurturing" is irrelevant; what matters is whether a feminine designation limits or expands the class of persons reaching a legal benefit or obligation.
Common Confusion
Feminine as grammatical category versus feminine as biological designation: In common law jurisdictions, unlike many civil law systems, legal instruments are not written in a grammatically gendered language, so "feminine" in Anglo-American law almost never refers to grammatical gender. When historical sources use "feminine," they mean female sex, not grammatical class. Researchers accustomed to civilian or Roman law sources, where grammatical gender has direct interpretive significance, should not import that framework into common law document analysis.
Feminine versus female: These terms are often used interchangeably in historical legal dictionaries, but modern legal usage increasingly treats "female" as the operative biological or legal classification and "feminine" as an adjective of lesser technical precision. Statutory interpretation provisions in modern codes typically speak of "female" rather than "feminine."
Why It Matters in Research
The primary research value of this term is in wills, deeds, and older statutes where gendered language in a bequest or grant triggers an interpretive question. Bouvier's illustration — that a bequest of "mares" does not pass horses — is representative of the older common law canon that feminine designations in instruments are presumptively limiting. Researchers examining historical probate records, conveyances, or trust instruments should flag any feminine or male-gendered noun (mare, widow, heir male, spinster) because these words carried real operative weight in determining who took.
In statutory construction, the picture is more complex and has shifted substantially. Nineteenth-century statutes routinely used masculine pronouns and nouns as generic, while feminine designations were more often genuinely limiting. Modern gender-neutrality statutes in most U.S. jurisdictions and in federal law reverse or complicate this presumption: many states now provide by statute that words of one gender include all genders unless context requires otherwise. Researchers using the Law Mind corpus should be alert to whether a statute predates or postdates the applicable state's gender-neutrality construction act, as the interpretive default may have flipped entirely.
Historical corpus sources — particularly older digests and abridgments — may categorize cases involving women's legal capacity, property rights, or status under headings like "Feme," "Feme Covert," or "Sex" rather than under "Feminine." The term itself rarely appears as a standalone index heading in case reporters.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three historical dictionaries — Black's, Rapalje & Lawrence, and Bouvier's — are in full agreement on the core definition: feminine means of or pertaining to females. There is no meaningful divergence among them on the definitional baseline.
Bouvier's entry is the most instructive for research purposes because it supplies the operative consequence: the feminine designation in an instrument is "generally confined to females," and illustrates this with the mares-and-horses example (citing 3 Brev. 9). This is the canonical formulation of the interpretive canon and is consistent with the broader common law principle of noscitur a sociis and the rule that technical words in instruments take their natural meaning.
Black's and Rapalje both offer only the bare definition without elaborating the interpretive consequences — a pattern common in those dictionaries for terms they treat as self-evident. This brevity is itself a caution: the historical dictionaries do not capture the full range of statutory construction complexity that the term implicates in practice.
None of the three historical sources addresses the gender-neutrality construction acts that would emerge in the twentieth century, and none engages with the question of non-binary or intersex legal classification. For research in those areas, the historical dictionaries are a starting point only.
Jurisdictional Note
Most U.S. states and the federal government have enacted statutory construction provisions specifying that words importing one gender include all genders, or specifically that masculine terms include feminine and vice versa. The scope and precise wording of these provisions varies. Researchers should consult the applicable jurisdiction's general construction statute before assuming either the old common law limiting canon or the modern inclusive canon applies to a given instrument or enactment.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia — Gender and Sex in Law (for the broader framework of sex-based legal classification and its evolution); Statutory Construction (for interpretive canons governing gendered language in instruments and enactments).