Word.ws English Dictionary

womanly

Syllables: wom·an·ly/ˈwʊmənli/

womanly adjective: considered typical of, stereotypical of, or appropriate to women; feminine.

Adjective

womanly (comparative womanlier, superlative womanliest)

  1. Considered typical of, stereotypical of, or appropriate to women; feminine.
    • I know that the sound of it moved me more even than her words, it was so very human - so very womanly.1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC
    • "What I mean, a woman who doesn't go in for booze and sport and cigarettes. Man gets sick of these tough flappers. Give me a womanly woman every time. As I said before, I could see at a glance that you were a thoroughly womanly woman."1938, Norman Lindsay, Age of Consent, 1st Australian edition, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1962, →OCLC, page 149
  2. (rare) Female.

Adverb

womanly

  1. In the manner of a woman.
    Synonyms:
    womanlily

womanly meaning in Hindi, Malayalam, Gujarati and Pashto

womanly in Hindi

having the characteristics of a woman
स्त्रैण straiṇ

womanly in Malayalam

feminine, female, feminal
സ്ത്രീസഹജമായ, സ്ത്രീജനോചിതമായ, സ്ത്രൈണ, സ്ത്രീയെ സംബന്ധിച്ച, പെണ്ണായ, സ്ത്രീസ്വഭാവമുള്ള
shapely, voluptuous, curvaceous
സ്ത്രൈണ, സ്ത്രീത്വമുള്ള, മാദകത്തിടമ്പായ, മദാലസയായ, വടിവൊത്ത ശരീരമുള്ള, ആകാരസൗഷ്ഠവമുള്ള

womanly in Gujarati

womanly
બૈરક bairak

womanly in Pashto

having the characteristics of a woman
ښځينه ẍëźina
More languagesFewer languages
womanly in Arabic
نِسَوِيّ nisawiyy
womanly in Indonesian
betina
womanly in Persian
زنانه zanâne

Examples of womanly in a sentence

  • His bruises from the fight did funny things to her womanly instincts.
  • With Mae West, coquettish dissemblance was out; womanly seductiveness was in.
  • The LLL promotes the idea of good mothering through the womanly art of breastfeeding.

All 13 example sentences with womanly

Synonyms of womanly

Antonyms

Forms of womanly

comparativewomanlier
superlativewomanliest
alternative formwomonly
alternative formwomynly

Origin of womanly

From Middle English womanly, wommanlich, wommanly, wommanlych, wummonlich, equivalent to woman + -ly (adjectival suffix).

From Middle English wommanliche, wommanly, equivalent to woman + -ly (adverbial suffix).

Words formed from womanly

Questions about womanly

What does womanly mean?
Womanly means considered typical of, stereotypical of, or appropriate to women; feminine.
What is womanly in Hindi?
Womanly in Hindi is स्त्रैण (straiṇ). See Womanly meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is womanly?
Womanly can be an adjective or an adverb.
How do you pronounce womanly?
Womanly is pronounced /ˈwʊmənli/.

Words near womanly in the dictionary

  1. womanlily
  2. womanliness
  3. womanlinesses
  4. womanlover
  5. womanlovers
  6. womanly
  7. womanmode
  8. womanmoded
  9. womanmoder
  10. womanmoders
  11. womanmodes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: womanly (page history and authors); womanly (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); બૈરક (Gujarati) (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)-Vealhurl-womanly.wav.

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