Glossary: gender

Explanation

Grammatical gender is a grammatical category which refers to how some words express meaning about sex or gender e.g. some nouns which refer to people such as man or woman. In some languages, for example French or Spanish, all nouns carry some form of gender, including inanimate objects like chair. However, in English, gender is only shown with certain nouns which refer to male or female people or roles (e.g. actor/actress), animals (e.g. stallion/mare), and in pronouns (e.g. he/she). Gendered nouns in English can be male, female, common gender nouns or neuter gender nouns. Recently, some gender distinctions have faded. For example, we often now use actor both for any member of the acting profession.