EFFEMINATE • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Effeminate

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/ifˈɛmɪnət/ Listen

verb

Effeminate v. t. (past & past part. effeminated; pres. part. effeminating) To make womanish; to make soft and delicate; to weaken. "It will not corrupt or effeminate children's minds."

Effeminate v. i. To grow womanish or weak. "In a slothful peace both courage will effeminate and manners corrupt."

adjective

Effeminate adj.

Having some characteristic of a woman, as delicacy, luxuriousness, etc.; soft or delicate to an unmanly degree; womanish; weak. "The king, by his voluptuous life and mean marriage, became effeminate, and less sensible of honor." "An effeminate and unmanly foppery."

Womanlike; womanly; tender; in a good sense. "Gentle, kind, effeminate remorse." Note: Effeminate and womanish are generally used in a reproachful sense; feminine and womanly, applied to women, are epithets of propriety or commendation.

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Etymology of 'Effeminate'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Effeminate" Quotes from Famous Books

... perfect Father, a Divine Providence, and so make the possibility for them of a new progress, and give to that ancient and highly endowed race another chance in history. What they want is evidently moral power, for they have all intellectual ability. The effeminate quality which has made them slaves of tyrants during two thousand years will be taken out of them, and a virile strength substituted, when they come to see God as law and love,—perfect law and perfect love,—and to see that communion with him comes, not from absorption, ...

— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... dangerous game to play, for it meant conspiracy; and so long as the Lennoxes and their effeminate, lanky son were basking in Elizabeth's favour, the English queen held her trump card. But Lady Lennox was intriguing and ambitious, the head of English Catholic disaffection, and could only be held to Elizabeth's side by delusive ...

— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... man to wear—and all fault in gesture and in motion which is like to it. The manners of the wrestling-ground and of the stage are sometimes odious; but let us see the actor or the wrestler walking simple and upright, and we praise him. Let him use a befitting neatness, not verging toward the effeminate, but just avoiding a rustic harshness. The same measure is to be taken with your clothes as with other matters in which ...

— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope

... winter in their camp of cars, or in some fortified place, sold their services to the highest bidder, changed masters according to interest or inclination, and by their bravery became the terror of these effeminate populations and the arbiters of ...

— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... offshoot can be followed up directly to the parent stock. Taking, for example, the mediaeval architecture of Spain, the brilliant 'Moresco,' we find it to be a combination of the vigorous Gothic of the North with the beautiful though effeminate Saracenic—the exotic of the South. And of these latter, each is traceable, though by different lines, to the same great prototype, the Roman. For when Rome was divided, the Dome fell to the inheritance of the ...

— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various

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