- 1
Womenfolk means the women of a particular family, village, or community, spoken of together — "the men went out to fish while the womenfolk stayed behind", "he sent money home to his womenfolk". It is always plural and takes a plural verb; there is no "a womenfolk". Two things give the word its flavour. First, it is old-fashioned and rural, the language of farming villages and of stories set in the past, so a modern office worker would never use it about colleagues. Second, and more importantly, it usually looks at the women from the men's side — "his womenfolk" means the women belonging to his household. That feeling is why the word can sound uncomfortable today; it quietly treats women as part of a man's world. It pairs with , and modern speakers use both mainly for humour or a deliberate old-time tone. Note the difference from , which means all women everywhere: womenfolk is a local group you can point to.
(一家、一村的)女眷、婦女們(帶舊時或鄉土色彩)
組成women + folk. Folk is an old word for people, so this is literally "the women people" — the women among a certain set of people. The same folk is in menfolk and in "my folks" for one's family.
原始詞典資料2 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法,原文照列,我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的;有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
womenfolknoun
- 1
Women collectively.
- 2
The adult female members of a community.
- “Ain’t she a splendid specimen of Southern womanhood?” Rufus asked. “Down yonder, they teach their womenfolks to serve.”
資料來源:英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary(CC BY-SA 4.0)。 原文照列,未經改寫。