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What is the female version of "phallic"?

phal·lic/ˈfalik/Adjective

  1. Of, relating to, or resembling a phallus or erect penis.

It would have a definition as:

Of, relating to, or resembling a vagina.

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7  
Perhaps women are not so neatly summed up. – jbelacqua Apr 3 '11 at 7:13
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@jgbelacqua: ...or perhaps men don't build buildings so often needing resembling much else. – Mitch Apr 3 '11 at 15:19
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I believe the feminine for phallic really ought to be phalliquette. :) – tchrist Apr 3 '11 at 18:02
Phalliquette, I like. @tchrist, I'm sure it would raise some fairly vehement opposition from the feminists... good for a laugh. – Karl Apr 4 '11 at 16:47
@tchrist that sounds phallacious. – Andrew Grimm Feb 15 at 11:13

2 Answers

up vote 20 down vote accepted

I think yonic is a bit quaint. It certainly has a longer history, but that may be because its ancient Sanskrit origins give it a certain air of respectability. Vulvic is more common today, perhaps because we live in an age that doesn't pussy-foot around delicate subjects quite so much.

But if we were to allow whimsical neologisms, I'd have to go for phannic (which works better for Brits, since our fanny is always a front bottom, not a backside).

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+1: yonic is properly the opposite of lingamic anyway. – chaos Apr 3 '11 at 3:52
What happened in 1991 to make "yonic" so popular? – Dan Apr 3 '11 at 19:06
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@user744: Doubtless nothing in particular. Quite a few of the occurrences counted by Ngram are misreadings (of baryonic, for example), and there aren't that many in total anyway. Just goes to show you can't read too much into automated analysis at this level. – FumbleFingers Apr 4 '11 at 2:13
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Out of curiosity, what happened to plain old vaginal? – onomatomaniak Oct 28 '11 at 5:57
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@onomatomaniak, that remains the opposite of penile rather than phallic. – Esteis Mar 30 '12 at 23:01
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up vote 5 down vote

According to Merriam-webster, that would be the term yonic.

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Of which the opposite is lingamic. It's not a clear antonym, though it would certainly serve. – Jon Hanna Feb 14 at 20:34

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