Gender (Noun)
Meaning 1
The properties that distinguish organisms on the basis of their reproductive roles; "she didn't want to know the sex of the foetus".
Classification
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects.
Examples
- The doctor explained that the gender of the baby couldn't be determined from the early ultrasound images.
- In humans, the gender is determined by the presence of XY chromosomes in males and XX in females.
- The development of gender is often believed to be linked to both genetic and environmental factors.
- Pregnant women who undergo prenatal testing may choose to learn the gender of their unborn child.
- During mating rituals, the bright plumage of the male bird plays a crucial role in determining its gender.
Synonyms
Hypernyms
Hyponyms
Meaning 2
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.
Classification
Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents.
Examples
- In many languages, gender is a grammatical category that influences how nouns, adjectives, and pronouns are formed and used.
- Most Indo-European languages base their grammatical gender on the distinction between masculine and feminine, but some languages, such as Arabic, have three grammatical genders.
- Italian has two main genders: masculine and feminine, but noun endings don't always reflect the actual sex of the noun's referent.
- In Russian, the grammatical gender of nouns influences the conjugation of adjectives, pronouns, and verbs in agreement with them.
- Some Romance languages, including Spanish and French, demonstrate grammatical gender with nouns through their agreement with the articles that precede them.