gender

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   Class; kind.

   […]plant nettles or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs or distract it with many[…]

2. 2
   noun

   Sex (a category, either male or female, into which sexually-reproducing organisms are divided on the basis of their reproductive roles in their species).

   the gene is activated in both genders

3. 3
   noun

   Identification as a man, a woman, or something else, and association with a (social) role or set of behavioral and cultural traits, clothing, etc; a category to which a person belongs on this basis. (Compare gender role, gender identity.)

   I am a cross-dresser by pleasure and inclination, a transgenderal person. To me for human beings to express themselves along gender lines is a wonderful and uniquely human phenomena.

4. 4
   noun

   A division of nouns and pronouns (and sometimes of other parts of speech) into masculine or feminine, and sometimes other categories like neuter or common, and animate or inanimate.

   The pronominal declension [of English], on which we will focus most of our attention, inflects pronouns for person, number, case, gender, animacy, and reflexivity.

5. 5
   noun

   Synonym of voice (“particular way of inflecting or conjugating verbs”).

   143. […] We have now to speak of the following eight particulars relating to verbs: Gender or Sort, Person, Number, Time, Mode, Participle, Gerund, and Supine. [...] 1st.--Of the Gender. 144. Gender means the same as sort or kind. There are four principal Sorts of Verbs; namely, Active verbs, Passive verbs, Neuter verbs, and Impersonal verbs.

6. 6
   noun

   The quality which distinguishes connectors, which may be male (fitting into another connector) and female (having another connector fit into it), or genderless or androgynous (capable of fitting together with another connector of the same type).

   Connectors are identified by gender. When copper pins are exposed in the connector, its gender is male.

7. 7
   verb

   To assign a gender to (a person); to perceive as having a gender; to address using terms (pronouns, nouns, adjectives...) that express a certain gender.

   In an interview, he even noted that he "dressed, acted and thought like a man" for years, but his coworkers continued to gender him as female (Shaver 1995, 2).

8. 8
   verb

   To perceive (a thing) as having characteristics associated with a certain gender, or as having been authored by someone of a certain gender.

   At the same time, however, the convictions they held about how a woman or man might write led them to interpret their findings in a rather androcentric fashion, and to gender the text accordingly.

Etymology

From Middle English gendre, borrowed from Old French gendre, borrowed from Latin genere (“type, kind”). Doublet of genre and genus. The verb developed after the noun.