Muliebrity
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Muliebrity is the quality of being a woman. This word is sometimes used as a counterpart to virility, in an analogy with the counterparts of "feminine" and "masculine". The word is a borrowing from Latin muliebritas ("womanhood"), from "mulier" for "woman".
Dictionaries often consider it a synonym of "femininity" or "womanhood". Vanderbilt University uses it in a slightly different way, offering a Muliebrity Award to recognize the achievements of women. In his book Mother Tongue (1990), author Bill Bryson describes it as meaning "the state of being a woman" .
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)).
[edit] References
- Arredia, Joni, Muliebrity: Qualities of a Woman, 1996, ISBN 0-9653203-1-6 (hardcover)
- Wordsmith Word of the Day entry.
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