Distaff is an interesting word because it is both a noun and an adjective, but the two are, at first glance, rather unrelated.
The noun is part of the technology of spinning cloth - it is a staff for holding material. The adjective means "pertaining to women".
According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, distaff is from Low German diesse meaning flax and staef meaning stick or staff. The adjectival form is through the word spindle. In Old English, there were words spinelhealf and sperehealf meaning the female and male lines of descent, respectively.
Distaff is a fairly rare word, about 1 in every 5,500,000 words, per Google ngram viewer. It is also declining in popularity.
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