THE NOUN: GENDER

THE NOUN: GENDER

 You know that living beings are of either the male or the female sex. Now compare the words in the following pairs:

{Boy, Girl

{Lion, Lioness

{Hero, Heroine

{Cock –sparrow, Hen – sparrow

What do you notice?

The first word of each pair is the name of a male animal.

The second word of each pair is the name of a female animal

A noun that denotes a male animal is said to be of theMasculine Gender. [Gender comes from Latin genus, kind or sort.]

A noun that denotes a fenale animal is said to be the Feminine Gender.

A noun that denotes either a male or a female is said to be the Common Gender; as

Parent, child, friend, pupil, servant, thief, relation, enemy, cousin,

Person, orphan, student, baby, monarch, neighbour, infant.

A noun that denotes a thing that is neither male nor female (i.e, thing without life) is said to be of the Neuter Gender; as,

Book, pen room, tree,

[Neuter means neither, that is neither male nor female)

 It will be thus seen that in Modern English the Gender of a noun is entirely a matter of sex  or the absence of sex. It has nothing to do with the form  of a noun, which determines its gender in many other languages, e.g. in Urdu where bagiche is masculine and lakri is feminine.

 Objects without life are often personified, that is, spoken of as if they were living, beings.  We then regard them as males or females.

 The Masculine Gender is often applied to objects remarkable for strength and violence; as,

 The Sun, summer, winter, time, Death,

The sun sheds his beams on rich and poor alike.

 The Feminine Gender is sometimes applied to objects remarkable for beauty, gentle-ness, and gracefulness; as,

 The Moon, the Earth, Spring, Autumn, Nature, Liberty,

Justice, Mercy, Peace, Hope, Charity.

The moon has hidden her face behind a cloud.

Spring has spread her mantle of green over the earth.

Peace hath her victories no less renowned than war.

 This use is most common in poetry but certain nouns are personified in prose too. A ship is often spoken of as she; as,

  The ship lost all her boats in the storm.