Word.ws English Dictionary

en femme

UK/ɒn ˈfɑm//ɑn ˈfɑm/

en femme adjective: chiefly of a cross-dressing, non-binary, or trans person: dressed in feminine clothing.

en femme: chiefly of a cross-dressing, non-binary, or trans person: dressed in feminine clothing
Image: Flora Beaurivage and Thierry Lambert, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Adjective

en femme (not comparable)

  1. Chiefly of a cross-dressing, non-binary, or trans person: dressed in feminine clothing.
    • I am convinced that the tendency or at least the desire to cross dress, is many times more common than the most, liberal statistics I have read. While enfemme, I have had far too many straight men whisper to me they have thought about it and wish they had the opportunity and courage to act on it as...1995 fall, Samantha Cole, “Mailbag: A Fortunate, Married Crossdresser”, in TV/TS Tapestry Journal: For All Persons Interested in Crossdressing & Transsexualism, number 73, Waltham, Mass....
    • If the female discovers her partner's transgendered persona herself or is told by a person other than her partner, the situation is usually quite different. She may overhear a conversation, see a photograph of him en femme, watch a television talk show on which her partner appears cross-dressed, or...1998, Sandra S. Cole, “The Female Experience of the Femme: A Transgender Challenge”, in Dallas Denny, editor, Current Concepts in Transgender Identity (Garland Gay and Lesbian Studies; 11; Garland...
  2. Of a situation: suitable for a cross-dressing, non-binary, or trans person to dress in feminine clothing.
    • These Holidays En Femme are for members of Tri-Ess and we welcome prospective members, heterosexual crossdressers, to join with us in our educational and social programs.1984, Carol Beecroft, “Editors Choice”, in Carol Beecroft, editor, Transvestia: For the Heterosexual Crossdresser, Tulare, Calif.: Chevalier Publications, →OCLC, page 4, column 3

Adverb

en femme (not comparable)

  1. Of a cross-dressing, non-binary, or trans person: while dressed in feminine clothing.
    • G., a crossdresser, lived on the second floor of the hotel at which she worked. Not wanting to walk through the lobby enfemme, she climbed the fire escape. Her heels got stuck in the catwalk and the police had to rescue her.1997 winter, Jane Ellen Fairfax, “Chapter News Update: Dateline: New York, New York”, in Femme Mirror, volume 22, number 1, Houston, Tex.: The Society for the Second Self, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from...
    • They spend anywhere from a couple of hours with us to a couple of days, immersed in classes with a faculty of deans who teach the students individually how to do their own makeup, walk in heels, go out and about town en femme, probe their erotic yearnings, network with others, and in general share...2002, Veronica Vera, “Introduction: Student Orientation”, in Miss Vera’s Cross-dress for Success: A Resource Guide for Boys who Want to be Girls, New York, N.Y.: Villard, →ISBN, page xiv

Examples of en femme in a sentence

  • Most of them also "love to shop"—especially en femme […]2002 July, Jane E. Hegland, Nancy J. Nelson, “Cross-Dressers in Cyber-space: Exploring the Internet as a Tool for Expressing Gendered...
  • Casa Susanna offered makeup, hair, wardrobe and comportment tutorials and 150 acres on which guests could roam freely "en femme," as they called it.2023 June 1, Kirstin Butler, “American Experience: We Were Never Meant to See this Photograph”, in GBH, PBS, archived from the original on...

Forms of en femme

alternative formenfemme

Origin of en femme

Borrowed from French en femme (“as a woman”) as in s’habille en femme (“dresses as a woman”), from en (“as”) + femme (“woman”).

Words that rhyme with en femme

Questions about en femme

What does en femme mean?
En femme means chiefly of a cross-dressing, non-binary, or trans person: dressed in feminine clothing.
How do you use en femme in a sentence?
Most of them also "love to shop"—especially en femme […]
What part of speech is en femme?
En femme can be an adjective or an adverb.
How do you pronounce en femme?
En femme is pronounced /ɒn ˈfɑm/ (UK).

Words near en femme in the dictionary

  1. en dash
  2. en dashes
  3. en echelon
  4. en face
  5. en famille
  6. en femme
  7. en flute
  8. en garde
  9. en garçon
  10. en homme
  11. en mass

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: en femme (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Naomi Persephone Amethyst (NaomiAmethyst)-en femme.wav.

Cite this entry: “en femme.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/en_femme. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.