gender
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]
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Gender \Gen"der\ (j[e^]n"d[~e]r), 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.]
[1913 Webster]
1. Kind; sort. [Obs.] "One gender of herbs." --Shak.
[1913 Webster]
2. Sex, male or female.
[1913 Webster]
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.
[PJC]
3. (Gram.) A classification of nouns, primarily according to
sex; and secondarily according to some fancied or imputed
quality associated with sex.
[1913 Webster]
Gender is a grammatical distinction and applies to
words only. Sex is natural distinction and applies
to living objects. --R. Morris.
[1913 Webster]
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.
[1913 Webster]
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