Latin male is an adverb which means 'badly, wrongly, wickedly, etc'. Latin malus, -a, -,um is an adjective 'bad, evil'. The word female is English. The Latin word for a woman was femina, and there was another form, a diminutive femella 'girl' (i.e., literally 'little woman'). The -VllV is a suffix and not part of the word, but is added on to make it a diminutive. The Latin word is usually derived from a Proto)indo-European root *dhēi- 'to suck'. The -min- in femina is probably an old (as in obsolete) suffix that made a verb into a noun/adjective and with passive meaning. So, the reconstructed meaning of femina could be 'someone who suckles'. English male is (via French) from Latin masculus, a double diminutive (i.e., the c and the l, cf. homunculus 'manikin') of mas 'male, masuline'. Latin, like English, has words that are similar, but different. But the fact that English male and Latin male 'badly' are spelled the same is an accident of history.


Ceci n'est pas un seing.