WOMANHOOD

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does womanhood mean? 

• WOMANHOOD (noun)
  The noun WOMANHOOD has 3 senses:

1. the state of being an adult woman

2. women as a class

3. the status of a woman

  Familiarity information: WOMANHOOD used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• WOMANHOOD (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The state of being an adult woman

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

muliebrity; womanhood

Hypernyms ("womanhood" is a kind of...):

adulthood (the state (and responsibilities) of a person who has attained maturity)

Derivation:

woman (women as a class)

woman (an adult female person (as opposed to a man))

Sense 2

Meaning:

Women as a class

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Synonyms:

fair sex; woman; womanhood

Context example:

the fair sex gathered on the veranda

Hypernyms ("womanhood" is a kind of...):

class; social class; socio-economic class; stratum (people having the same social, economic, or educational status)

Holonyms ("womanhood" is a member of...):

womankind (women as distinguished from men)

Derivation:

woman (an adult female person (as opposed to a man))

Sense 3

Meaning:

The status of a woman

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Hypernyms ("womanhood" is a kind of...):

berth; billet; office; place; position; post; situation; spot (a job in an organization)

Derivation:

woman (women as a class)

woman (an adult female person (as opposed to a man))

 Context examples 

This rough sailor-fellow had been the instrument, and, though Ruth did not love him, he had made her conscious of her womanhood.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Her young womanhood had, I knew, been spent in rough scenes and under strange conditions.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Shorn of its glamour and romance, Arctic travel became to them a reality too harsh for their manhood and womanhood.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

Ah, Jo, instead of wishing that, thank God that 'Father and Mother were particular', and pity from your heart those who have no such guardians to hedge them round with principles which may seem like prison walls to impatient youth, but which will prove sure foundations to build character upon in womanhood.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

She drew his head down to hers as she spoke, and there, with their cheeks together, were the two faces, the one stamped with the waning beauty of womanhood, the other with the waxing strength of man, and yet so alike in the dark eyes, the blue-black hair and the broad white brow, that I marvelled that I had never read her secret on the first days that I had seen them together.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

She was overcome with shame and with the mystery of her own burgeoning womanhood.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

She knew she looked well, she loved to dance, she felt that her foot was on her native heath in a ballroom, and enjoyed the delightful sense of power which comes when young girls first discover the new and lovely kingdom they are born to rule by virtue of beauty, youth, and womanhood.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

But her amazement passed all bounds when he told her he had been on Maui, the particular island whereon she had attained womanhood and married.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

All three wore suits of thin silver gray (their best gowns for the summer), with blush roses in hair and bosom, and all three looked just what they were, fresh-faced, happy-hearted girls, pausing a moment in their busy lives to read with wistful eyes the sweetest chapter in the romance of womanhood.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

She had never been tormented by womanhood, and she had lived in a dreamland of Tennysonian poesy, dense even to the full significance of that delicate master's delicate allusions to the grossnesses that intrude upon the relations of queens and knights.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)