Female means of the sex that gives birth or produces eggs. A female bird, female and male, the female of the species.
It is the biological term and applies across animals and plants. In engineering it names the part that receives another — a female connector — which is standard and unremarkable technical usage. Note feminine, which is about qualities and about grammatical gender rather than biology. Note also that female is not built from male: it comes from Latin femella and was reshaped to look as though it were.
1adjectivefemaleOf the sex that gives birth or produces eggs.
“Female turtles come up onto the beach at night to lay their eggs.”
2adjectivereceivingReceiving another part, of a connector.
“Plug the cable into the female socket on the side of the laptop.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
female is a sex category.
Old French femelle comes from Latin femella, a young woman, a diminutive of femina. The English spelling was altered to match male, which the word is not related to at all.
Middle English
female
English, today
female
Built from
From Middle English female. From Middle English female, an alteration of Middle English femele, from Old French femele, femelle (“female”), from Medieval Latin fēmella (“a female”), from Latin fēmella (“a girl, a young female, a young woman”), diminutive of fēmina (“a woman”). The English spelling and pronunciation were remodelled under the influence of male, which is otherwise not etymologically related. Contrast woman, which is etymologically built on man (as in, “person”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA