femminile

Femminile is the Italian term for the feminine gender in grammar and, more broadly, for femininity. It is used as both an adjective and a noun in linguistic descriptions. In Italian, nouns, pronouns, adjectives and determiners have a gender, which can be masculine or feminine, and elements that modify a noun must agree in gender and number with it. The feminine gender is commonly contrasted with the masculine gender (maschile). The word femminile derives from Latin femininus, through historical usage in Romance languages, and is cognate with the English feminine.

In everyday grammar, femminile describes nouns and forms associated with the feminine. For example, the noun donna is feminine, so it takes feminine articles and adjectives: la donna, una donna giovane. Adjectives agree in gender as well: una casa grande (feminine noun and feminine adjective form). Italian also shows the feminine form in adjectives that change for gender, such as alto → alta, nuovo → nuova.

The term is also used in linguistic terminology as a shorthand for “genere femminile” or “femminile singolare/plurale” when describing grammatical categories, and less commonly as a standalone noun, e.g., Il femminile dell’aggettivo. Beyond grammar, femminile can refer to femininity as a social and cultural concept, though in technical writing it is typically confined to grammatical gender.

Across Romance languages, equivalent terms exist (for example, femminile in Italian, femenino in Spanish, feminino in Portuguese, féminin in French), all denoting the same general idea of feminine gender, with language-specific rules for agreement and morphology.