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Josephine

proper nounadjectiveattested in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈd͡ʒəʊ.zə.fiːn//
  • United Kingdom//ˈd͡ʒəʊ.sə.fiːn//
  • United Kingdom//ˈdʒəʊ.zə.fiːn//
  • United Kingdom//ˈdʒəʊ.zə.fʌɪn//
  • United States//ˈd͡ʒoʊ.sə.fiːn//
  • United States//ˈd͡ʒoʊ.zə.fiːn//

A female given name from French.

proper noun

  1. 1

    A female given name from French.

    "I hate my name, too, so sentimental! I wish every one would say Jo instead of Josephine. How did you make the boys stop calling you Dora?”

    I'm going to call him Joseph or Josephine if it's a girl. Why? Because it's a strong name, Joe, Joseph.

Etymology

From French Joséphine, diminutive of Josèphe, feminine form of Joseph. By surface analysis, Joseph + -ine. Popularized in English by Josephine Bonaparte, the empress of Napoleonic France.

adjective

  1. 1

    Pertaining to Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor.

    In the 1780s however these were just a couple of strands in the mayhem of Josephine reform, with decrees streaming out of the Hofburg […] at an astounding rate.

Etymology

Etymology tree Biblical Hebrew הוֹסִיף (hosíf)der. Biblical Hebrew יוֹסֵףbor. Middle English Ioseph English Joseph English -ine English Josephine From Joseph + -ine.

The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).