GENDER • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Gender

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/dʒˈɛndər/ Listen

noun

Gender n.

Kind; sort. (Obs.) "One gender of herbs."

Sex, male or female. Note: The use of the term gender to refer to the sex of an animal, especially a person, was once common, then fell into disuse as the term became used primarily for the distinction of grammatical declension forms in inflected words. In the late 1900's, the term again became used to refer to the sex of people, as a euphemism for the term sex, especially in discussions of laws and policies on equal treatment of sexes. Objections by prescriptivists that the term should be used only in a grammatical context ignored the earlier uses.

(Gram.) A classification of nouns, primarily according to sex; and secondarily according to some fancied or imputed quality associated with sex. "Gender is a grammatical distinction and applies to words only. Sex is natural distinction and applies to living objects." Note: Adjectives and pronouns are said to vary in gender when the form is varied according to the gender of the words to which they refer.

verb

Gender v. t. (past & past part. gendered; pres. part. gendering) To beget; to engender.

Gender v. i. To copulate; to breed. (R.)

See images of 'Gender'

Etymology of 'Gender'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Gender" Quotes from Famous Books

... and gender, Deep within the torrent dip; Even our children, young and tender, Play ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... had a mother, it wouldn't have mattered, because she would have known it was a screw he had lost, and she would have known just what comfort he would have needed; whereas a Fraulein would know nothing about a screw, beyond the German for it, and the gender, of course. And of what use is that to a child? It may sound very unconventional, and I suppose it was so, to go to a strange house and ask for Thomas, and my only excuse a small screw. ...

— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss

... agree in number and tense with the noun. They must also agree in gender, that is, verbs animate must have nouns animate. They must also have animate pronouns and animate adjectives. Vitality, or the want of vitality, seems to be the distinction which the inventors of the language, seized upon, to set up the ...

— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... made up of women who are suffering with neurotic troubles, generally of a psychopathic nature. The number of viragints, gynandrists, androgynes, and other psycho-sexual aberrants of the feminine gender is very ...

— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir

... fraternity, but is disabled by the loss of a finger, by which means he cannot, as he used to do, secure a die. But I am very much at a loss how to call some of the fair sex, who are accomplices with the Knights of Industry; for my metaphorical dogs[2] are easily enough understood; but the feminine gender of dogs has so harsh a sound, that we know not how to name it. But I am credibly informed, that there are female dogs as voracious as the males, and make advances to young fellows, without any other design but coming to a familiarity with their purses. I have ...

— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift

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