English Language & Usage Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for linguists, etymologists, and serious English language enthusiasts. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
In the English language, what are the right terms for a female wolf and a female owl; perhaps "she wolf" and "owl hen"?
Are there distinct or separate words in English used for feminine? I checked in Wikipedia +other websites but found only "she-wolf" and "owl-hen".
You used to have wolfess, now an archaic term. She-wolf or female wolf are the terms commonly used:
Wolfess, the medieval term for a she-wolf, is now rarely used in Present Day English except to mean a woman that is sexually aggressive.
(Studies in Linguistic Variation and Change: From Old to Middle English)
Female owl is the more common term as far as owl is concerned; “hen owl” appears to be a more informal expression.
The problem with the words you are looking for (as seen with the answer bitch for a female dog) is that those words are normally assigned to husbanded animals.
Hen / rooster, cow / bull, mare / stallion, etc.
Edit: Adding a generic 'ess' is the equivalent of saying 'female of' and in this case your best options seem to be 'she wolf' or 'wolfess' and 'hen owl'
