In legal terminology, a woman or wife; particularly used in the phrase 'feme covert' (a married woman under her husband's legal protection) or 'feme sole' (an unmarried woman).
From Old French 'femme' (woman), derived from Latin 'femina' (woman). This legal term preserved in English law through Norman French influence after the 1066 conquest.
The term 'feme covert' reveals how English law literally made married women invisible—a 'feme covert' had no separate legal identity from her husband, so she couldn't own property or sue independently; the word is a linguistic fossil of archaic gender discrimination.
Old English/Middle English legal term ('feme covert,' 'feme sole') used to describe women's legal status in relation to marriage; encoded coverture doctrine that erased married women's legal personhood.
Obsolete outside historical/legal scholarship. Use only in historical analysis; otherwise use 'woman' or 'person.'
["woman","person","legal status"]
Historians have documented how coverture denied women property, contract, and identity rights; modern legal systems increasingly recognize feme sole principles to restore equality.
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