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 sb. 5].
a. 1626. Bacon, Max. & Uses Com. Law, i. (1635), 3. Then 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. 142–3. An ancient custom of the land described the man and wife as baron and feme—the lord and his woman; but since England had received the gospel, she had put herself, in what concerned her spiritual life, so fully under Church control, that she had never dreamt of making laws to regulate a sacrament of that Church.
† 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.
| Which are three ills that mischefe men | |
| to know dost thou desire? | |
| Have here in few my frend exprest, | |
| the Fem, the Flud, the Fire. |
1594. H. Willobie, Avisa (1880), 15.
| This number knits so sure a knot, | |
| Time doubtes, that she shall adde no more, | |
| Vnconstant 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.
