womanhood

What it means

1. countableuncountableThe state or condition of being a woman.

   She was a vigorous youth poised on the brink of womanhood.

   1 more example

   "I swear, even in this most holy hour of completed Womanhood, that I will abandon Evil and cherish Good."

   1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC

2. countableuncountableAll of the women of a given place, area, or subgroup regarded collectively.

   There was only one thing to be done: call out, start the alarm, set the heather on fire! Awaken the womanhood of America to free the motherhood of the world!

   1913, Rachel Galvin, quoting Margaret Sanger, “Margaret Sanger's "Deeds of Terrible Virtue"”, in Humanities, volume 19, number 5, National Endowment for the Humanities, published 1988, archived from the original on 05 Jan 2017

   3 more examples

   […]the white women, several of whom had been watching the massacre of the Negro men, pounced on the Negress. I do not wish to be understood as saying that these women were representatives of the womanhood of East St. Louis. Their faces showed, all too plainly, exactly who and what they were.

   1917, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, quoting Carlos F. Hurd, chapter II, in [Untitled, From the St. Louis Post Dispatch], July 3rd, 1917, quoted in The East St. Louis Massacre: The Greatest Outrage of the Century, retrieved 19 Nov 2020, page 12

   What hast thou done, / O womanhood of France, / Mother and daughter, sister, sweetheart, wife, / What hast thou done, amid this fateful strife. // To prove the pride of thine inheritance / In this fair land of freedom and romance?

   1920 [1909], Henry Van Dyke, “The Red Flower and Golden Stars”, in The Poems of Henry Van Dyke, new and revised edition, dated to 1914–1916, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, Jeanne d’Arc Returns, page 384, lines 1–5

   What was once a multi-million-dollar fantasy of womanhood – exclusively svelte, athletic models in lace-trimmed thongs or diamante push-up bras, each framed by a pair of 12-foot-high angel wings – quickly became a parody so gauche it’s hard to imagine it was ever taken seriously.

   2022 July 25, Leah Dolan, “New documentary unearths troubling links between Victoria’s Secret and Jeffrey Epstein”, in CNN, archived from the original on 30 Aug 2022

   Synonyms: womankind[universal]] or worldwide> · Antonyms: manhood, mankind

3. countableuncountableThe idealized nature of a woman: all of the characteristics traditionally and ideally ascribed to womanliness regarded collectively.

   From the kitchen comes the even murmur of their voices. Mother and daughter: the protocols of womanhood being passed on, generation to generation.

   2005, J. M. Coetzee, “Four”, in Slow Man, New York: Viking, →ISBN, page 31

   1 more example

   She had cast off the terror of the leaping flame, the cold power of judgment that was even now being done, and the wise sadness of the tombs - cast them off and put them behind her, like the white shroud she wore, and now stood out the incarnation of lovely tempting womanhood, made more perfect - and in a way more spiritual - than ever woman was before.

   1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC

   Synonyms: womanishness, womanliness · Antonyms: manhood, mannishness, manliness

In a sentence

She was a vigorous youth poised on the brink of womanhood.

Where it comes from

1. Middle Englishwomanhoode
2. Englishwomanhood

From Middle English womanhoode, wommanhod, whomanhode, variants of wommanhede. By surface analysis, woman + -hood.