Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. female.

1928		W. Winchell Your Broadway & Mine 15 Nov. [synd. col.] [The] paper [...] referred to the femme shaft [...] as a ‘limb’.
1929		W. Winchell On Broadway 9 Aug. [synd. col.] Matthew Vassar, who founded that femme college.
1938		W. Winchell ‘On Broadway’ 2 Sept. [synd. col.] There’s a school for femme criminals in Paris.
1944		Ted Yates ‘I’ve Been Around’ 24 Mar. [synd. col.] Those charming femme elevator operators in Harlem’s [...] Hotel Theresa.
1950		Down Beat 17 Nov. n.p.: Another femme singer, who has been in trouble before, walked out [...] because her chauffeur was picked up with heroin capsules.
1965		K. Marlowe Mr Madam (1967) 20: Many female impersonators, or femme-mimics, work au naturel.
2003		G. Tate Midnight Lightning 55: Feminist author and activist Germaine Greer, reviled as a cliché pro-femme ballbuster in her time.

2. (gay, also femmy) used of a ‘female’ lesbian.

1959		A. Smith Third Sex 33: ‘Say, what’s the bit? I thought you were femme, but now you’re in slacks’ [Simes:DLSS].
1963		J. Rechy City of Night 232: Scores are here, too; and masculine homosexuals cruising each other; queens in semibeachdrag; lesbians—femme and bull types.
1964		Lavender Lex. n.p.: fem:–Short for feminine. This is the common expression of the lesbian denoting the submissive role.
1972		E. Newton Mother Camp 32: Female homosexuals also make a distinction between ‘butch’ and ‘fem’.
1979		L. Block Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling (2005) 203: ‘I wonder how you’d look with a ruby in your navel.’ ‘A little too femme.’.
1987		in Delacoste & Alexander Sex Work (1988) 240: The ‘feminist’ interviewer would be appalled by fem whores or butch pimps.
1992		Daring Hearts: Lesbian and Gay lives of 50s and 60s Brighton n.p.: You always had a little finger ring, whether you were butch or fem.
1993		Kennedy & Davies Boots of Leather (2014) 237: ‘I wanted a girlfriend, a girlfriend that was more, like, femmy [...] That was what really turned me on was bleached blondes, and of course makeup and real femmy clothes, y'know, dresses and high heels’.
1993		Kennedy & Davies Boots of Leather (2014) 5: All commentators on twentieth-century lesbian life have noted the prominence of butch-fem roles.
1997		L. Block Burglar in Library 61: ‘Hardesty’s your typical backslapping butch, and Dinmont’s one of those passive- aggressive femme numbers’ [Simes:DLSS].
1997		Qld Pride May Metro 6/6: [personal advert] [F]emme lesbian seeks prof intelligent lesbian.
1998		R. Scott Rebecca’s Dict. of Queer Sl. 🌐 femme — [...] feminine, applied to both men and women.

3. (gay, also femmy) used of an effeminate male homosexual.

1963		J. Rechy City of Night 100: Chuck the masculine cowboy and Miss Destiny the femme queen.
1972		Sat. Rev. (US) 12 Feb. 24: Today’s homosexuals can be open (‘come out’) or covert (‘closet’), practicing or uninhibited [...] manly (‘stud’) or womanly (‘fem’).
1975		K. Jay ‘A journey to the End of Meetings’ in Jay & Young (1979) 453: They were not into butch/femme roles so prevalent in the fifties and sixties.
1981		Meat 149: I guess my sarge and these guys showed me you don’t have to act fem or any other shit like that to be gay. They showed me that men can stay men and have fun [Simes:DLSS].
1993		G. Michaels Dead on your Feet 23: Donaldson was also an extremely femme decorator whose fluttery mannerisms would fatigue a mayfly in heat [Simes:DLSS].
1994		D. Sadownick Sacred Lips 101: I storm out, the femmy receptionist scribbling in Myron’s appointment book [Simes:DLSS].
1995		R. Scott Movie Dreams 144: ‘Fuck off, you little poofter,’ he said into my face. ‘Star doesn’t like ’em fem’ [Simes:DLSS].
1999		N. Drinnan Pussy’s Bow 99: ‘Not even the femmiest of lipstick lesbians gets her nails done every week’.
2001		P. Mortenson At Wanda’s Insistence 🌐 It attracted TVs and those interested in fem men from all over Spain and Europe but mainly Brits.
2003		Baker & Stanley Hello Sailor! 156: [S]mall-town Wales had never seen the like of them before [...] it was a confrontation of butch versus femme, backward versus sophistication.
2005		J. Stahl I, Fatty 31: ‘Huh, Pansy-boy? Am I squeezin’ femme-lard?’.
2016		Wash. Post 14 June 🌐 If you’re lucky, it’s a mixed crowd, muscle Marys and bois and femme fags and butch dykes and genderqueers.
2022		J. Hannaham Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit 150: ‘This ain’t bout no femme-queen realness or no butch queen up in drags’.
2023		R. Milward Man-Eating Typewriter 216: ‘I ponced you might be an omi-palone, all joshed-up as you are in that [...] fem clobber’.