female circumcision
3
9.9
- noun
- /ˈfiːmeɪl ˌsɜːrkəmˈsɪʒən/
- Offensive
:
mutilación genital femenina
- A young girl hesitates as she is readied for female circumcision.
- female circumcision practices
- called female circumcision
Examples
-
No one should make the mistake of supposing that female circumcision, in those places where it is practiced, is done to benefit the girl.
Academic text (1998) -
Some regions still enforce female circumcision as a customary practice, despite its health risks.
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And what is being done to stop female circumcision?
Academic text (1997) -
"Among the Maasai," she says, "female circumcision is still common."
Fiction book (1992) -
The women have one commonly shared resolve: to erase the exercise of painful female circumcision in their country.
Blog text (25) -
Some fundamentalist Muslim parents force female circumcision upon their minor daughters on the basis of religious beliefs.
Academic text (2006) -
The same logic leads believers in universal fights to condemn, for example, female circumcision, a practice that remains common in African societies.
Academic text (1998) -
Islamic scholars disagree on FGM: some say no obligatory rules exist, while others refer to the mention of female circumcision in the Hadith.
Academic text (2007) -
The practice of female circumcision is often linked to cultural traditions and beliefs.
-
Activists are working tirelessly to educate communities about the harms of female circumcision.
Synonyms
An operation that removes all or part of the clitoris
How Severe
- Offensive
- Offensive
3
9.9
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is compositionally built from 'female' (relating to women) + 'circumcision' (a surgical removal), so its core meaning—circumcision performed on females—is directly inferable from the constituents. Although cultural and clinical specifics may require background knowledge, the basic concept is transparent and cross-linguistically expressible, so a B1 learner who knows both words would grasp the general meaning.
Etymology
Female circumcision comes from using the word circumcision, which originally meant 'to cut around' and was first used for male ritual cutting. By putting female before it, people used the same word to mean cutting away parts of a girl's or woman's outer genitals, so today the phrase refers to that practice.