femeie

Romanian

Alternative forms

• fămeaiă, fămeie — archaic
• fomeie, fimeie — Moldavia (region)

Etymology

Inherited from Latin familia (“family”). Compare Aromanian fumealji (“family; children”), Albanian fëmijë (“child”).

The old sense of "family" in Romanian is now lost, replaced by the neologism familie. Despite the phonetic and semantic similarities, is unrelated to Latin femella, and it is improbable that this word influenced the development of the meaning in modern Romanian because the older forms of femeie did not have the sense of woman and the other Romanian/Eastern Romance languages don't have this sense either. It is also unrelated to Latin femina, which produced some apparent "cognates" in the Western Romance languages that only share superficial similarities.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [fe.ˈme.je]

• Audio:

  (file)

• Rhymes: -eje
• Hyphenation: fe‧me‧ie

• Audio:

  (file)

Noun

femeie f (plural femei)

1. woman

   Synonym: (regional) muiere

2. wife

   Synonyms: soție, nevastă

3. (obsolete) family

   Synonym: familie

   • 1693, Floarea Darurilor:

     Lot, ieși cu muiarea ta și cu fămeaia ta afară din cetate.

     Lot, exit with your wife and your family outside the city.

Declension

	singular		plural
	indefinite	definite	indefinite	definite
nominative-accusative	femeie	femeia	femei	femeile
genitive-dative	femei	femeii	femei	femeilor
vocative	femeie, femeio		femeilor

Synonyms

• muiere, doamnă

Related terms

• femeiesc
• familie

See also

• bărbat

Further reading

• “femeie”, in DEX online—Dicționare ale limbii române (Dictionaries of the Romanian language) (in Romanian), 2004–2026