Ok the explanation of the etymology of todays word "malefactor" has me curious/confused.

"The combining form male- meaning 'evil' occurs in words derived from Latin."

I looked some things up and found that "mal" is generally to mean "bad" so that bit makes sense but I looked up "female" and as far as I can tell the 2 words have no real connection as far as the whole "male" / "male" thing goes.
female was derived from "femina" and originally "femella" (which I have conflicting info that it means either "girl" or "to suck" referring to breastfeeding)
So the only reason female and male are similar is because they just tidied up the spelling so it looked closer but actually is completely not related.

does the prefix "fe" mean anything?

it makes no sense to be that 2 words relating to opposites of the same thing would have no real dichotomy in their roots.
Like even in a biblical sense... I would have imagined that is "male" meant "evil" or is "mal" meant bad or "with sin" that female would then must mean "without sin" or "without evil".

Something is amiss here because it seems there should be more of a connection/balance between the 2 words etymology considering the nature of opposites and the importance of what the subject matter is. I mean its not like , oh i dunno... "read" and "tread" or something. maybe thats a bad example, I dunno.

We're not talking apples and oranges here. Were talking apples and apples...just diff variety/gender of apples.

so does anyone have any further info on the whole male/female - male/male connections?

thanks