English

Proper noun

Frances

1. A female given name, feminine form of Francis.
   • c.1590 William Shakespeare: Love's Labour's Lost: Act III, Scene I:

     Armado. Sirrah Costard, I will enfranchise thee.

     Costard. O! marry me to one Frances: I smell some l'envoy, some goose, in this.

   • 1883 Wilkie Collins, Heart and Science, Chatto and Windus, page 227:

     "My name is Frances. Don't call me Fanny!" "Why not?" "Because it's too absurd to be endured! What does the mere sound of Fanny suggest? A flirting dancing creature - plump and fair, and playful and pretty! - - - Call me Frances - a man's name, with only the difference between an i and an e. No sentiment in it, hard, like me."

   • 1961 Janet Frame, Owls Do Cry, ISBN 072510029X, page 97:

     My other sisters had interesting names. There was Francie, that was Frances, and though she wore slacks and my father seemed angry with her, I thought she was some relation to Saint Francis, who, I believed, kept animals in his pocket and took them out and licked them, the way Francie licked a blackball or acid drop, for pure love.

Related terms

• (variants): Francesca, Francine
• (pet forms): Fannie, Fanny, Fran, Francie, Frannie, Franny

Translations

Etymology 2

Proper noun

Frances

1. plural of France
   • 1967, Eric A. Nordlinger, The Working-class Tories, page 236:

     The malaise of French politics has commonly been interpreted as a product of a deep-seated conflict between the ‘two Frances’.

   • 1998, Shanny Peer, France on Display: Peasants, Provincials, and Folklore (ISBN 0791437108), page 2:

     Although scholars have offered different chronologies and causalities for the move toward modernity, most have resolved the paradox of the two Frances by placing them in sequence: "diverse France gave way over time as modern centralized France gathered force."

   • 2013, Making Sense of the Secular: Critical Perspectives (ISBN 1136277218), page 48:

     Was it the end of the long conflict between the two Frances? Yes and no.

Portuguese

Noun

Frances m (plural Franceses, feminine Francesa, feminine plural Francesas)

1. Obsolete spelling of francês

Adjective

Frances ‎(invariable, comparable)

1. Obsolete spelling of francês