Muliebrity

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Muliebrity is the quality of being a woman. This neologism was introduced as a missing opposite of virility, in an analogy with the opposition of "feminine" and "masculine". The word is a borrowing from Latin muliebritas ("womanhood"), from "mulier" for "woman".

The current usage of the world has not been well-established. Dictionaries often differ in their definition, considering it a synonym of "femininity" or "womanhood".

The word came into a wider circulation after the book of Joni Arredia, although its occasional usage may be traced to much earlier times, e.g., in Al Purdy's poem Uncle Fred on Côte des Neiges (in Poems for All the Annettes (Toronto, 1962)).

References

Arredia, Joni, Muliebrity: Qualities of a Woman, 1996, ISBN 0965320316 (hardcover)
[Wordsmith Word of the Day] entry.

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