"Femur" stands for "thigh", "the upper part of the thigh", or "the loins", and, figuratively, the capacity to bear children (just like the expression "birthing hips"). This is supported by the close affinities of Latin words related to "femur" and "femina". This link is confirmed by the Ancient Greek root of the latter word, "φύω", which means "to produce", hence "to give birth".
I suspect in fact that this is where originated the myth of the birth of Dionysos... a mere play on words!
See the Lewis and Short for more details: - http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=femina&la=la#lexicon - http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=femur&la=la&can=femur0#lexicon- http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=+%CF%86%CF%8D%CF%89&la=greek#Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:entry=fu/w-contents
Cheers, Jocelyn Le 23/09/2013 19:22, David Marjanovic a écrit :
Also, I had no idea that femur was related to fēmina...It's not! :-) Short e and long ē have different origins. Wiktionary provides quite different etymologies for them (here's fēmina: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/femina#Latin ).
--"As a Professor of Science, I assure you we did in fact evolve from filthy monkey men." Hubert J. Farnworth.