feme
(fɛm)
Also 6 feeme, 6–7 fem, 8–9 femme.
[a. OF. feme, Fr. femme woman, wife.]
1. Law. (Chiefly conjoined with baron.) Wife.
(The technical spelling is feme; but in non-professional use the mod.F. form has often been adopted. So also in feme-covert: see below.)
| [1292], 1594, 1611 [see baron n. 5]. a 1626 Bacon Max. & Uses Com. Law i. (1636) 2 The feme is entitled to dower. 1714 Scroggs Courts-leet (ed. 3) 161 If a Feme Copyholder for Life takes Husband, who commits a Waste, this shall bind the Wife. [1813 Byron in Moore Life (1847) 217 Divorce ruins the poor femme.] 1818 Cruise Digest (ed. 2) II. 334 The feme died leaving issue; then the baron died. 1873 Dixon Two Queens II. ix. viii. 142 An ancient custom of the land described the man and wife as baron and feme. |
† 2. In 16th c. often used (in verse and somewhat playfully) for: Woman. Obs.
| 1567 Turberv. Ovid's Epist. 76 So bolde Away to have a Greekish feme purloynde. 1577 T. Kendall Flowers of Epigrammes 58 Three ills that mischefe men..the Fem, the Flud, the Fire. 1594 Willobie Avisa (1880) 15 Nature hath begot Of Fleeting Feemes, such fickle store. 1653 H. Whistler Upshot Inf. Baptisme i. 6 The Fem was concerned as (in desire) one. |