What does gender mean?

Definitions for gender
ˈdʒɛn dərgen·der

This dictionary definitions page includes all the possible meanings, example usage and translations of the word gender.

Princeton's WordNet

  1. gender, grammatical gendernoun

    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

  2. sex, gender, sexualitynoun

    the properties that distinguish organisms on the basis of their reproductive roles

    "she didn't want to know the sex of the foetus"

Wiktionary

  1. gendernoun

    A division of nouns and pronouns (and sometimes of other parts of speech), such as masculine, feminine, neuter or common.

  2. gendernoun

    A division between classes or kinds.

  3. gendernoun

    The mental analogue of sex: one's maleness (masculinity), femaleness (femininity), etc., as seen from one's own perspective.

    Susan's gender is neither male nor female; ze identifies as two-spirit.

  4. gendernoun

    A socio-cultural phenomenon that divides people into various categories such as "male" and "female", with each having associated dress, roles, stereotypes, etc.

    Gender in Western society is often viewed as a binary entity, with only males and females.

  5. genderverb

    to engender

Samuel Johnson's Dictionary

  1. Gendernoun

    Etymology: genus, Latin; gendre, French.

    Our bodies are our gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners; so that if we will supply it with one gender of herbs, or distract it with many, the power and corrigible authority of this lies in our will. William Shakespeare, Othello.

    The other motive,
    Why to a publick court I might not go,
    Is the great love the general gender bear me. William Shakespeare, Hamlet.

    Cubitus, sometimes cubitum in the neutral gender, signifies the lower part of the arm on which we lean. Arbuthnot.

    Ulysses speaks of Nausicaa, yet immediately changes the words into the masculine gender. Notes on the Odyssey.

  2. To Genderverb

    Etymology: engendrer, French.

    Foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do gender strife. 2 Tim. ii. 23.

  3. To Genderverb

    To copulate; to breed.

    A cistern for foul toads
    To gender in. William Shakespeare, Othello.

    Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind. Lev. xix. 19.

Webster Dictionary

  1. Gendernoun

    kind; sort

  2. Gendernoun

    sex, male or female

  3. Gendernoun

    a classification of nouns, primarily according to sex; and secondarily according to some fancied or imputed quality associated with sex

  4. Gendernoun

    to beget; to engender

  5. Genderverb

    to copulate; to breed

  6. Etymology: [OF. genre, gendre (with excrescent d.), F.genre, fr. L. genus, generis, birth, descent, race, kind, gender, fr. the root of genere, gignere, to beget, in pass., to be born, akin to E. kin. See Kin, and cf. Generate, Genre, Gentle, Genus.]

Wikidata

  1. Gender

    Gender is a range of physical, mental, and behavioral characteristics distinguishing between masculinity and femininity. Depending on the context, the term may refer to biological sex, social roles, or gender identity. Sexologist John Money introduced the terminological distinction between biological sex and gender as a role in 1955. Before his work, it was uncommon to use the word "gender" to refer to anything but grammatical categories. However, Money's meaning of the word did not become widespread until the 1970s, when feminist theory embraced the distinction between biological sex and the social construct of gender. Today, the distinction is strictly followed in some contexts, especially the social sciences and documents written by the World Health Organization. However, in most other contexts, even in some areas of social sciences, the meaning of gender has undergone a usage shift to include "sex" or even to replace the latter word. Although this gradual change in the meaning of gender can be traced to the 1980s, a small acceleration of the process in the scientific literature was observed when the Food and Drug Administration started to use "gender" instead of "sex" in 1993. "Gender" is now commonly used even to refer to the physiology of non-human animals, without any implication of social gender roles.

Chambers 20th Century Dictionary

  1. Gender

    jen′dėr, v.t. to beget.—v.i. (B.) to copulate. [An abbrev. of engender.]

  2. Gender

    jen′dėr, n. kind, esp. with regard to sex: (gram.) the distinction of nouns according to sex. [Fr. genre—L. genus, generis, a kind, kin.]

Editors Contribution

  1. gender

    The fact of being a male or female human being or male or female living organism.

    Gender is used in human resources data and reports for various purposes.


    Submitted by MaryC on March 25, 2020  

Surnames Frequency by Census Records

  1. GENDER

    According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Gender is ranked #124548 in terms of the most common surnames in America.

    The Gender surname appeared 138 times in the 2010 census and if you were to sample 100,000 people in the United States, approximately 0 would have the surname Gender.

    87.6% or 121 total occurrences were White.
    8.7% or 12 total occurrences were Black.

British National Corpus

  1. Spoken Corpus Frequency

    Rank popularity for the word 'gender' in Spoken Corpus Frequency: #4424

  2. Nouns Frequency

    Rank popularity for the word 'gender' in Nouns Frequency: #1827

How to pronounce gender?

How to say gender in sign language?

Numerology

  1. Chaldean Numerology

    The numerical value of gender in Chaldean Numerology is: 6

  2. Pythagorean Numerology

    The numerical value of gender in Pythagorean Numerology is: 8

Examples of gender in a Sentence

  1. Sergio Flores/Getty Images:

    Leave children alone. I'm also saying we need to get porn out of our school libraries. We need to stop the gender modification of children.

  2. James Finberg:

    There are always going to be differences in salary based on location, role and performance, but the process is blind to gender. google is not alone in Silicon Valley.

  3. Nadine Gasman:

    It's always a challenge implementing laws but having this law makes it compulsory to investigate this crime with a gender perspective.

  4. Jair Bolsonaro:

    Other fundamental values for Brazilian society, reflected in the human rights agenda, are the defense of the family, the right to life from conception, self-defense and the repudiation of gender ideology.

  5. Dave Llewellyn:

    We talk about sexting, messaging and using social media because they are all very common among British teenagers and a prominent part of culture in schools, the workshops started as a safe space for guys at university to discuss issues of gender and sex, and we are now working with teenagers who are exploring their masculinity and sexuality.

Popularity rank by frequency of use

gender#1#2727#10000

Translations for gender

From our Multilingual Translation Dictionary

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