English Grammar: Nouns Gender Sex

Video: Gender of Nouns

THE GENDER IN COMMON NOUNS DISTINGUISHED BY A WORD SIGNIFICANT OF SEX.

DISTINCTION OF SEX INDICATED BY DISTINCT 'WORDS :-

(Where a common form exists, it is supplied.)

 NOTES.-

l The masc. is here formed from the fem.; the suffix groom, 0. E. guma, meaning " man," i.e. " the bride's man."
2 Only in these two words is the fem. form used as common. So in compounds, eider-duck, wild-duck; solan-goose. Gander and goose are not strictly distinct words, the masculine being formed from the feminine.
3 Shortened from grandfather, grandmother.
4 Lass, probably a contraction of lad-ess.
5 Lady, etymologically feminine of lord, by inflexion.
6 Woman, i.e. wife-man (Germ. weib).      
7 Friar, i.e. brother.
8 Nephew, niece, from Lat. nepos, neptis, through the French.
9 Only used in speaking of the parentage of animals.
10 Wizard: 0. E. wisa, a wise man: witch, a sorceress.

Note. A few foreign masculines and feminines, occasionally used in English, may be  added: beau, belle; monsieur, madam, mademoiselle.

Common objects without life are often personified, and the Nouns denoting them are then treated as masculine or as feminine. Thus the Sun is usually spoken of as he; and the Moon (also a ship or a balloon) as she; while the names of the planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter) are masculine or feminine according to their sex in mythology.

Moreover in poetry and rhetoric many other inanimate things and qualities are personified and treated either as masculine or as feminine. Thus in Collins's " Ode on the Passions," Fear, Anger, Despair, are masculine; and Hope, Melancholy, Cheerfulness, feminine. So Heaven, Time, Death, Summer, Winter, Autumn, are often masculine; and Spring, Poetry, Sculpture, Astronomy, Art, Nature, feminine.

Note. 1. This usage gives English an advantage over most other languages in the poetical and rhetorical style: for when nouns naturally neuter are converted into masculine or feminine, the personification is more distinctly marked.

• " A thousand years their cloudy wings expand
  Around me, and a dying glory smiles
  O'er the fair times, when many a subject land
  Looked to the winged Lion's marble piles
  Where Venice sat in state, throned on HER hundred isles."
  (Childe Harold, Iv.)

" Freedom, driven from every spot on the Continent, has sought an asylum in a country which she always chose for her favourite abode; but the is pursued even here and threatened with destruction." (Robert Hall.)

Note. 2. In the earliest form of English, as in Latin, Greek, French, &c., the names of many things without life are masculine or feminine; as, sunne (sun), fem.', mona, (moon), masc.; tunge (tongue), fem. These artificial genders would probably have remained in force till now, had it not been for the influence of the Norman Conquest; which gave so violent a shock to the language as to obliterate many of its characteristic features.

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