Male means of the sex that fathers children. A male voice, male and female, the male of the species.
It is the biological term and applies to animals and plants as well as people. In engineering it names the part that fits into another — a male connector — which is a standard and unembarrassed technical use. Note masculine, which is about qualities and about grammatical gender rather than biology; and that male displaced the Old English word waepned entirely.
1adjectivemaleOf the sex that fathers children.
“Only the male lion has a thick mane around its head.”
2adjectivefittingFitting into another part, of a connector.
“Push the male end of the cable into the socket on the back of the TV.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
male is a sex category.
Old French masle comes from Latin masculus, a diminutive of mas, a male. Macho is the same word through Spanish, and male displaced the Old English waepned.
Middle English
male
English, today
male
Built from
From Middle English male. From Middle English male, borrowed from Old French malle, masle (Modern French mâle), from Latin masculus (“masculine, a male”), diminutive of mās (“male, masculine”). a doublet of macho. Displaced native wǣpned.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA