Know Latin French? What does 'femme libre' mean?
Thanks!
EDIT: Especially in the quote from the 1850s (ish) that ’‘not one of them ever raved that the femme libre could be woman”.
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Free woman? And I think that’s French.
I know Latin , but you are citing French: une femme = a woman ; libre = free
Woman in Latin is femina; free woman is femina libera
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Free woman. I know you got the answer, but I just wanted to look smart.
Well, that one could be hard to figure out. The literal translation, of course, is free woman but it could be an idiom, and an idiom from 1850.
Edit:
Looking around a little, with my limited knowledge of French, it seems like it might mean not a “loose woman,” but a woman who has freed herself from the constraints of the cultural expectations for woman, an adventurer perhaps, a woman who makes her own rules. Does that fit in with the context of the quote?
And who are you quoting?
@Adirondackwannabe: Like a professional dowser, I seem to have been born able to find the printed word anywhere. I was the little kid reading the back of the Wheaties box and pouring warm cocoa in her ear, according to a family legend.
@lilycoyote: I just noticed the French dictionary nearby. Une femme libre indeed meant, and still means, a woman of loose morals, a promiscuous woman, etc.
@gailcalled Thank you! We want the newt to get the right answer here. I really don’t mind at all when people point when I’m wrong, particularly when I really am wrong, completely wrong, it turns out! I was just giving it a shot but I completely missed the target. LOL. It really does mean a loose woman!
@gailcalled I’m quoting Pauline Stafford quoting John Kemble.
If I ever travel to France, that is one phrase that I will be careful about using.
I feel the need to do more research. @Lilycoyote may well be correct also. The fine print in my huge dictionary had defeated me for the moment. Later, gator.
Given the context, it’s likely that it corresponds more closely to “liberated woman;” it appears as the title of this feminist newspaper of 1832.
@ratboy Wow, there was research done there. That’s quite sexy. Thanks a bunch!
A “free woman” was definitely a 19th century term for a woman who was liberated and lived life according to her own terms, i.e. Emma Goldman, George Eliot. It certainly could and did often have the connotation of promiscuity because “free women” often partook of “free love.”
@ratboy Are you changing before our very eyes and growing up?
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