femininos

Femininos is the masculine plural form of the Portuguese adjective feminino, used in grammar to indicate that a noun or its reference is of the feminine gender. In Portuguese, nouns and adjectives are gendered and must agree in gender and number with the nouns they describe. The term itself is most often encountered when discussing feminine categories in relation to masculine nouns.

In practice, femininos appears when a masculine plural noun is described as being feminine in gender. For example, nomes femininos means feminine names, and substantivos femininos means feminine nouns. The corresponding feminine plural form of the adjective is femininas, which would be used with feminine plural nouns, as in formas femininas (feminine forms). These agreements illustrate how gender and number influence adjective endings in the language.

Across Romance languages, related concepts exist but the exact forms differ. In Spanish, the equivalent is femeninos; in Italian, femininos is not used in the same way, with different word endings and agreement patterns. The general idea, however, is common: many languages mark nouns and adjectives for gender, and the plural forms of adjectives adjust accordingly to maintain grammatical harmony.

Femininos also intersects with discussions on linguistic gender and language policy, where researchers distinguish grammatical gender from natural gender and consider how gendered language shapes social perception. It remains a standard term within Portuguese grammar for describing masculine plural forms that denote feminine gender.