unwoman

unwoman

English

Etymology

un- +‎ woman

Verb

unwoman (third-person singular simple present unwomans, present participle unwomaning or unwomanning, simple past and past participle unwomaned or unwomanned)

1. (transitive) To deprive of feminine qualities, or of the status of womanhood; to unsex.
   • 1844, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Romaunt of the Page”, in Poems. […], volume I, London: Edward Moxon, […], OCLC 270767504, page 163:

     ‘ […] My love, so please you, shall requite
     No woman, whether dark or bright,
     Unwomaned if she be.’

   • 1863, Margaret Oliphant, Salem Chapel, Edinburgh: William Blackwood, Volume 2, Chapter 21, p. 22,

     Not all her anxiety for Arthur, not all her personal wretchedness, could unwoman the minister’s mother so much as to make her forgive or overlook Phœbe’s presumption.

   • 1972, Pearl S. Buck, “Thoughts of a Woman at Christmas” in Once Upon a Christmas, New York: John Day, p. 115,

     “He says I am not feminine, that I act like a man, that I’m too aggressive. I say that he unwomans me, because he doesn’t do the man’s work in the home, and I have to—somebody has to! […] ”

   • 1976, Susan Yankowitz, Silent Witness, New York: Knopf, Part Three, p. 141,

     The muslin dress unwomans her, a crude navy blue […] which buttons at the nape of her neck and drops past her knees in stiff irregular folds. Oh it hangs, it hangs, sack bag barrel. Even her waist is not hugged by it and there are no darts in consideration of her breasts.

   • 2010 August 18, Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley, Thiefing Sugar: Eroticism Between Women in Caribbean Literature, Duke University Press, →ISBN, page 10:

     To make historical sense of these writers' continual struggle with womanness, consider more closely how unwomaning did and did not work under chattel slavery. […] pregnant workers received no differential treatment, and slave motherhood was not (as Spillers finds in North America) a way for females to become women. [<span title="[...] imperial narratives insisted that ungendering preceded slavery […] this machinery of violent unwomaning was never abandoned.">…]

Noun

unwoman (plural unwomen)

1. A woman devoid of rights, recognition, or typical female characteristics; a female unperson.
   • 2020, Sarah E. Maier, Brenda Ayres, Neo-Victorian Madness (page 140)

     By allowing herself and her unborn child to be executed, effectively she is permitting an abortion and by extension, becoming an “unwoman.”