Adjacent Words

Gender definitions

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Webster's 1828 Dictionary

GEN'DER, n. [L. genus, from geno, gigno; Gr.to beget, or to be born; Eng. kind. Gr. a woman, a wife; Sans. gena, a wife, and genaga, a father. We have begin from the same root. See Begin and Can.]
1. Properly, kind; sort.
2. A sex, male or female. Hence,
3. In grammar, a difference in words to express distinction of sex; usually a difference of termination in nouns, adjectives and participles, to express the distinction of male and female. But although this was the original design of different terminations, yet in the progress of language, other words having no relation to one sex or the other, came to have genders assigned them by custom. Words expressing males are said to be of the masculine gender; those expressing females, of the feminine gender; and in some languages, words expressing things having no sex, are of the neuter or neither gender.
GEN'DER, v.t. To beget; but engender is more generally used.
GEN'DER, v.i. To copulate; to breed. Leviticus 19.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

n
1: a grammatical category in inflected languages governing the agreement between nouns and pronouns and adjectives; in some languages it is quite arbitrary but in Indo-European languages it is usually based on sex or animateness [syn: gender, grammatical gender]
2: the properties that distinguish organisms on the basis of their reproductive roles; "she didn't want to know the sex of the foetus" [syn: sex, gender, sexuality]

Merriam Webster's

I. noun Etymology: Middle English gendre, from Anglo-French genre, gendre, from Latin gener-, genus birth, race, kind, gender — more at kin Date: 14th century 1. a. a subclass within a grammatical class (as noun, pronoun, adjective, or verb) of a language that is partly arbitrary but also partly based on distinguishable characteristics (as shape, social rank, manner of existence, or sex) and that determines agreement with and selection of other words or grammatical forms b. membership of a word or a grammatical form in such a subclass c. an inflectional form showing membership in such a subclass 2. a. sex <the feminine gender> b. the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex II. verb (gendered; gendering) Etymology: Middle English gendren, from Anglo-French gendrer, from Latin generare — more at generate Date: 14th century engender

Oxford Reference Dictionary

n. 1 a the grammatical classification of nouns and related words, roughly corresponding to the two sexes and sexlessness. b each of the classes of nouns (see MASCULINE, FEMININE, NEUTER, COMMON adj. 6). 2 (of nouns and related words) the property of belonging to such a class. 3 colloq. a person's sex. Etymology: ME f. OF gendre ult. f. L GENUS

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Gender Gen"der, n. [OF. genre, gendre (with excrescent d.), F. genre, fr. L. genus, generis, birth, descent, race, kind, gender, fr. the root of genere, gignere, to beget, in pass., to be born, akin to E. kin. See Kin, and cf. Generate, Genre, Gentle, Genus.] 1. Kind; sort. [Obs.] ``One gender of herbs.'' --Shak. 2. Sex, male or female. [Obs. or Colloq.] 3. (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. --R. Morris. 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.

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Gender Gen"der, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Gendered; p. pr. & vb. n. Gendering.] [OF. gendrer, fr. L. generare. See Gender, n.] To beget; to engender.

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Gender Gen"der, v. i. To copulate; to breed. [R.] --Shak.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

(genders) 1. A person's gender is the fact that they are male or female. Women are sometimes denied opportunities solely because of their gender. ...groups that are traditionally discriminated against on grounds of gender, colour, race, or age. = sex N-VAR 2. You can refer to all male people or all female people as a particular gender. While her observations may be true about some men, they could hardly apply to the entire gender. ...the different abilities and skills of the two genders. = sex N-COUNT 3. In grammar, the gender of a noun, pronoun, or adjective is whether it is masculine, feminine, or neuter. A word's gender can affect its form and behaviour. In English, only personal pronouns such as 'she', reflexive pronouns such as 'itself', and possessive determiners such as 'his' have gender. In both Welsh and Irish the word for 'moon' is of feminine gender. N-VAR

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia

jen'-der (yaladh, `abhar; gennao): "Gender" is an abbreviation of "engender." In Job 38:29 yaladh (common for "to bear," "to bring forth") is translated "gender" (after Wycliff), the Revised Version (British and American) "The hoary frost of heaven, who hath gendered it?" margin "given it birth." In 21:10 we have `abhar (either the Piel of `abhar, "to pass over," etc., or of a separate word meaning "to bear," "to be fruitful"), translated "gendereth," "Their bull gendereth, and faileth not"; in Le 19:19, rabha', "to lie down with," is used of cattle gendering. In Ga 4:24 the King James Version we have "Mount Sinai, which gendereth (gennoa, "to beget") to bondage," the Revised Version (British and American) "bearing children unto bondage" (like Hagar, Abraham's bondwoman), and in 2Ti 2:23, which "gender strifes," i.e. beget them.

W. L. Walker

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

n. 1. Sex. 2. (Gram.) Inflection for sex, form relative to sex.