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gender

UK/ˈd͡ʒɛndə/US/ˈd͡ʒɛndɚ/
nounB2Common in everyday speech and writing · #4,978 of 15,258mostly written

Other forms: genders

Gender is the state of being male, female or otherwise identified. Gender equality, gender identity, the gender pay gap.

In grammar it is the class a noun belongs to, which in French and German has little to do with sex, since a table is feminine and a girl in German is neuter. The word is a doublet of genre and genus, all meaning a kind.

Dilshod Olmosovich · CC BY-SA 4.0

Definitions of gender

  1. 1noungenderThe state of being male, female or otherwise identified.B2

    “The survey asks for your age and gender, but you don't have to answer.”

gender is a state.

Where it comes from

Old French gendre comes from Latin genus, a kind; genre and genus are doublets.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *ǵenh₁-

  2. Middle English

    gendre

  3. English, today

    gender

From Middle English gendre. From Middle English gendre, borrowed from Old French gendre, borrowed from Latin genus (“type, kind”). a doublet of genre and genus. The verb developed after the noun. Displaced native Old English hād (“sex, gender”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

gender in the wild

  • The values present in a given language, of which there are usually two or three, are called the genders of that language.

    Grammatical gender

  • Some societies have third genders (and fourth genders, etc.) such as the hijras of South Asia and two-spirit persons native to North America.

    Gender

  • In the West, in the 1970s, feminist theory embraced the concept of a distinction between biological sex and the social construct of gender.

    Gender

  • The specifics of these gendered expectations may vary across cultures, while other characteristics may be common across many cultures.

    Gender role

  • In addition, gender roles (and perceived gender roles) vary based on a person's race or ethnicity.

    Gender role

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.