Word of the Day

Gender

October 17, 2020

gender

gen-der / jĕn-dər

noun 1. the sex of a living thing; the state of being male or female The only ineradicable difference between men and women is gender.  From "The Co-Citizens" by Corra Mae Harris, 1869 - 1935           2. males or females as a group In parts of the world where sex education is beset with taboos — including the United States — it is still common practice to separate genders for formal sex ed.  Bonnie J. Rough, “Why we shouldn’t be separating boys and girls for sex ed”, ‘The Washington Post’, October 19, 2018 3. in the grammar of some languages other than English, a category into which nouns, pronouns, adjectives and possibly verbs are divided  Therefore, it is either DER (the) Regen, or DIE (the) Regen, or DAS (the) Regen, according to which gender it may turn out to be when I look.  From “A Tramp Abroad” by Mark Twain, 1835 - 1910 etymology From the Latin noun genus, generis (birth, race, kind, gender) through the Old French noun gendre ( a variant of genre) of the same meaning. Thank you to Allen Ward for providing this etymology.
View Word of the Day Archive →