different between gender vs genus

English

Alternative forms

• (grammar: grammatical gender): g. (abbreviation)

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?d??nd?/
• (US) IPA^(key): /?d??nd?/
• Rhymes: -?nd?(?)
• Hyphenation: gen?der

Etymology 1

From Middle English gendre, gender (see also gendres), from Middle French gendre, genre, from Latin genus (“kind, sort”). Doublet of genre, genus, and kin. The verb developed after the noun.

Noun

gender (countable and uncountable, plural genders)

1. (obsolete) Class; kind. [14th-19th c.]
   • c. 1603, William Shakespeare, Othello, Act 1, Scene 3:

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

2. (grammar) 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. [from 14th c.]
   • 1991, Greville G. Corbett, Gender ?ISBN, pages 22 and 65:

     In Algonquian languages, given the full morphology of a noun, one can predict whether it belongs to the animate or inanimate gender […]

   • 2006, Viktor Elšik, Yaron Matras, Markedness and Language Change: The Romani Sample ?ISBN, page 29:

     Pronouns, for instance, are structures that organise information about continuous referents. This information is typically categorised in Romani according to Person, Number, Gender, Animacy, Case, and Discreteness.

   • 2015, Anna Giacalone Ramat, Paolo Ramat, The Indo-European Languages ?ISBN, page 191:

     The common gender might well reflect an IE animate gender.

3. (traditional, proscribed) Sex (a category such as "male" or "female" into which sexually-reproducing organisms are divided on the basis of their reproductive roles in their species). [from 15th c.]

   the gene is activated in both genders

   The effect of the medication is dependent upon age, gender, and other factors.

   • 1723, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, letter, 7 December:

     To say truth, I have never had any great esteem for the generality of the fair sex; and my only consolation for being of that gender has been the assurance it gave me of never being married to any one among them […] .

   • 2004, Wenona Mary Giles, Jennifer Hyndman, Sites of violence: gender and conflict zones, page 28:

     Gender does not necessarily have primacy in this respect. Economic class and ethnic differentiation can also be important relational hierarchies, […] .

4. 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.) [from 20th c.]
5. (grammar) Synonym of voice (“particular way of inflecting or conjugating verbs”)
   • 1835, James Paul Cobbett, A Latin Grammar for the Use of English Boys: Being an Explanation of the Rudiments of the Latin Language, London, page 111:

     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.

   • 1866, Guðbrandr Vigfusson, Some remarks upon the Use of the Reflexive Pronoun in Icelandic, in: Transactions of the Philological Society, page 87:

     Many of the words quoted are purely reflexive, others passive or deponent. Such words as óttask, œðrask, dásk, iðrask, reiðask are deponent, though they originally may have been reflexive, but the active gender is here quite obsolete.

   • 2007, Bernard Colombat, Some Problems in Transferring the Latin Model to the First French Grammars: Verbal voice, impersonal verbs and the -rais form, in: Eduardo Guimarães & Diana Luz Pessoa de Barros (eds.), Studies in the History of the Language Sciences 110: History of Linguistics 2002, John Benjamins Publishing Company, page 6:

     The general distinction is between three 'genders' out of the five genders of the Latin tradition: active gender, passive gender, neuter gender.

6. (hardware) The quality which distinguishes connectors, which may be male (fitting into another connector) and female (having another connector fit into it), or genderless/androgynous (capable of fitting together with another connector of the same type). [from 20th c.]

Usage notes

Since the 1960s, it is increasingly common—particularly in academic contexts—to distinguish between sex and gender, the former being taken as inherent biological distinctions and the latter as constructed social and cultural ones. See Wikipedia's article on the Sex and gender distinction.

Synonyms

• (grammar, of verbs): voice
• (biological sex): sex
• (class or kind): genre

Derived terms

Translations

See also

• (grammar) common, feminine, masculine, neuter
• (sex) female, male, hermaphroditic; man, woman, hermaphrodite
• genderqueer, bigender, non-binary, transgender, androgyne, crossdresser, hijra, kathoey, transsexual, two-spirit

Verb

gender (third-person singular simple present genders, present participle gendering, simple past and past participle gendered)

1. (sociology) 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.
2. (sociology) To perceive (a thing) as having characteristics associated with a certain gender, or as having been authored by someone of a certain gender.
   • 2003, Reading the Anonymous Female Voice, in The Anonymous Renaissance: Cultures of Discretion in Tudor-Stuart England, page 244:

     Yet because texts by “female authors” are not dependent on the voice to gender the text, the topics that they address and the traditions that they employ seem broader and somewhat less constrained by gender stereotypes.

Related terms

• misgender
• ungender, degender
• regender

Etymology 2

From Middle English gendren, genderen, from Middle French gendrer, from Latin gener?re.

Verb

gender (third-person singular simple present genders, present participle gendering, simple past and past participle gendered)

1. (archaic) To engender.
   • 1854, Robert Gordon (D.D., Minister of the Free High Church, Edinburgh.), Christ as Made Known to the Ancient Church: an Exposition of the Revelation of Divine Grace, as Unfolded in the Old Testament Scriptures, page 400:

     […] being a stranger to those restrictions which were afterwards laid on his posterity by the Mosaic law, and which gendered a servile frame of spirit.

   • 1893, The Academy and Literature, page 71:

     Our whole life was passed in public, which gendered a sympathy and good fellowship that always distinguishes Wykehamists from the rest of mankind.

2. (archaic or obsolete) To breed.
   • Leviticus 19:19 (KJV):

     Ye shall keep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind: thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed: neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woollen come upon thee.

   • 1896, John Todhunter, Three Irish Bardic Tales: Being Metrical Versions of the Three Tales Known as the Three Sorrows of Story-telling, page 11:

     Fear in the witch's heart was gendering with her hate,

     Seeing her evil thought grown to an evil deed, […]

Translations

References

• gender at OneLook Dictionary Search
• gender in Keywords for Today: A 21st Century Vocabulary, edited by The Keywords Project, Colin MacCabe, Holly Yanacek, 2018.
• gender in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

Anagrams

• gerned

Dutch

Etymology

Borrowed from English gender.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /???n.d?r/, /?d??n.d?r/
• Hyphenation: gen?der

Noun

gender m or n (plural genders)

1. gender (mental analog of sex)

Usage notes

Dutch lacks words to distinguish gender from sex, using the words geslacht or sekse to encompass both concepts. The term gender in Dutch has been recently introduced for cases when a clear distinction is needed, such as in the distinction between transgender (feeling oneself to be different from one's birth sex) and transsexual (having or desiring the sexual organs of the sex opposite to those one had at birth).

Related terms

• genderdysforie
• transgender

Polish

Etymology

From English gender.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?d???n.d?r/

Noun

gender m inan (indeclinable)

1. gender (identification as a man, a woman, or something else)

Further reading

• gender in Wielki s?ownik j?zyka polskiego, Instytut J?zyka Polskiego PAN
• gender in Polish dictionaries at PWN

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin genus (“birth, origin, a race, sort, kind”) from the root gen- in Latin gignere, Old Latin gegnere (“to beget, produce”). Doublet of gender, genre, and kin.

Pronunciation

• (UK) enPR: j?n’-?s, j?n’-?s, IPA^(key): /?d?i?n?s/, /?d??n?s/
• (US) enPR: j?n’-?s, IPA^(key): /?d?i?n?s/
• Rhymes: -i?n?s

Noun

genus (plural genera or (both nonstandard) genuses or genusses)

1. (biology, taxonomy) A category in the classification of organisms, ranking below family (Lat. familia) and above species.
   1. A taxon at this rank.

   All magnolias belong to the genus Magnolia.

   Other species of the genus Bos are often called cattle or wild cattle.

   There are only two genera and species of seadragons.
2. A group with common attributes.
3. (topology, graph theory, algebraic geometry) A natural number representing any of several related measures of the complexity of a given manifold or graph.
4. (semantics) Within a definition, a broader category of the defined concept.

Usage notes

• (biology, taxonomy, rank in the classification of organisms): See generic name, binomial nomenclature.

Synonyms

• See also Thesaurus:class

Hyponyms

• (topology, graph theory): Euler genus

Derived terms

Related terms

Translations

See also

• (semantics): differentia
• (biological taxa):

• domain
• kingdom
• phylum/division
• class
• order
• family
• supergenus
• genus
  • subgenus, section, series
• species

Further reading

• genus in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• genus in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

Anagrams

• Negus, negus

Danish

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin genus.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?e?nus/, [???e?nus]

Noun

genus n (plural indefinite genus or genera)

1. (biology, taxonomy) genus

   Synonym: slægt

2. (grammar) gender

   Synonym: køn

Further reading

• genus on the Danish Wikipedia.Wikipedia ^da

Dutch

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin genus.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /??e?.n?s/
• Hyphenation: ge?nus

Noun

genus n (plural genera)

1. (botany) a rank in a taxonomic classification, in between family and species.

   Synonym: geslacht

2. (botany) a taxon at this rank

   Synonym: geslacht

3. (linguistics) gender

   Synonym: geslacht

Derived terms

• subgenus
• supergenus

Finnish

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /??enus/, [??e?nus?]
• Rhymes: -enus
• Syllabification: ge?nus

Noun

genus

1. (botany) Synonym of suku (“genus”)
2. (topology) genus

   Synonym: suku

Declension

Latin

Pronunciation

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /??e.nus/, [???n?s?]
• (Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /?d??e.nus/, [?d????nus]

Etymology 1

From Proto-Italic *genos, from Proto-Indo-European *?énh?os (“race”), from Proto-Indo-European *?enh?- (“to produce, beget”); compare also g?ns, from the same root. Cognates include Ancient Greek ????? (génos, “race, stock, kin, kind”), Sanskrit ???? (jánas, “race, class of beings”), Proto-Celtic *genos (“birth; family”), and English kin.

Noun

genus n (genitive generis); third declension

1. birth, origin, lineage, descent
2. kind, type, class
3. species (of animal or plant), race (of people)
4. set, group (with common attributes)
5. (grammar) gender
   • 6th century, Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus (attributed): Commentarium de oratione et de octo partibus orationis. In: „Patrologiae cursus completus sive Bibliotheca universalis, integra, uniformis, commoda, oeconomica, omnium ss. patrum, doctorum scriptorumque ecclesiasticorum qui ab aevo apostolico ad innocentii III tempora floruerunt; […] . Series prima, in qua prodeunt patres, doctores scriptoresque ecclesiae latinae a tertulliano ad gregorium magnum. Accurante J.-P. Migne, cursuum completorum in singulos scientiae ecclesiaticae ramos editore. Patrologiae tomus LXX. Cassiodori tomus posterior. – Magni Aurelii Cassiodori senatoris, viri patricii, consularis, et vivariensis abbatis opera omnia in duos tomos distributa, ad fidem manuscriptiorum codicum emendata et aucta, notis, observationibus et indicibus locupletata, praecedente auctoris vita, quae nunc primum in lucem prodit cum dissertatione de ejus monarchatu. Opera et studio J. Garetii monarchi ordinis sancti Benedicti e congregatione sancti mauri. Nobis autem curantibus accesserunt complexiones in epistolas b. Pauli quas edidit et annotavit scipio Maffeius. Tomus posterior. – Parisiis, venit apud editorem, in via dicta d'amboise, près la barriere d'enfer, ou petit-montrouge. 1847“, p. 1225

     Genera nominum sunt sex: masculinum, ut hic Cato; femininum, ut haec musa; neutrum, ut hoc monile; commune duorum generum, ut hic et haec sacerdos: trium generum, ut hic, et haec, et hoc felix; epicoenon, quod Latine promiscuum dicitur, ut passer, aquila.

     Nouns have six genders: masculine, e.g. hic Cato 'this man Cato'; feminine, e.g. haec musa 'this muse'; neuter, e.g. hoc monile 'this necklace'; common to two genders, e.g. hic et haec sacerdos 'this priest or priestess'; of three genders, e.g. hic, et haec, et hoc felix 'this lucky man, woman or thing'; epicene, called promiscous in Latin, e.g. passer 'sparrow', aquila 'eagle'.

   • 16th century, Andreas Semperius (a.k.a. Andreas Sampere, Andreu Sempere): Andreae Semperii Valentini Alcodiani, doctoris medici, prima grammaticae latinae institutio tribus libris explicata, Majorca/Mallorca, 1819, p.19

     Genera nominum, septem sunt. Masculinum, cui praeponitur hic: ut hic Dominus. Foemineum, cui praeponitur haec: ut haec musa. Neutrum, cui praeponuntur hoc: ut hoc templum. Commune, cui praeponuntur hic, & haec: ut hic, & haec Sacerdos. Omne, cui praeponuntur hic, haec, hoc, vel per tres varias voces inflectitur: ut hic, haec, hoc felix, bonus, bona, bonum. Dubium, quod modo masculinum, modo faemineum, apud Oratores etiam invenitur: ut hic, vel haec dies. Promiscuum, in quo sexus uterque per alterum apparet: ut hic passer, haec aquila, hic lepus.

     Nouns have seven genders. Masculine, which you can precede with hic: hic dominus 'this Lord'. Feminine, which you can precede with haec, e.g. haec musa 'this muse'. Neuter, which you can precede with hoc, e.g. hoc templum 'this temple'. Common, which you can precede with hic and haec: hic & haec sacerdos 'this male or female priest'. Universal, which you can precede with all three of hic, haec, hoc, or which vary in three forms, e.g. hic, haec, hoc felix 'this lucky man, woman, thing', hic bonus, haec bona, hoc bonum 'this good man, good woman, good thing'. Doubtful, which in the orators can be found to be sometimes masculine, sometimes feminine, e.g. hic, vel haec dies 'this day'. Promiscuous, in which a gender appears instead of another, e.g. hic passer 'this sparrow' (always masculine), haec aquila 'this eagle' (always feminine), hic lepus 'this rabbit' (always masculine).

6. (grammar) subtype of word

Declension

Third-declension noun (neuter, imparisyllabic non-i-stem).

Hyponyms

• (grammar, genera nominum): [genus] f?min?num, [genus] mascul?num, [genus] neutrum, genus comm?ne, genus omne
• (grammar, genera verborum): [genus] ?ct?vum, [genus] pass?vum, [genus] neutrum, [genus] comm?ne, [genus] d?p?n?ns, [genus] medium

Derived terms

Descendants

Etymology 2

See the etymology of the main entry.

Noun

gen?s

1. genitive singular of gen?

References

• genus in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• genus in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• genus in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition, 1883–1887)
• Carl Meissner; Henry William Auden (1894) Latin Phrase-Book?^[1], London: Macmillan and Co.

Norwegian Nynorsk

Etymology

From Latin genus.

Noun

genus m or n (definite singular genusen or genuset, indefinite plural genera or genus, definite plural genera or generaa or genusa or genusane)

1. (biology, taxonomy) genus
2. (grammar) gender
3. (grammar) voice

References

• “genus” in The Nynorsk Dictionary.

Swedish

Noun

genus n

1. (grammar) gender (division of nouns and pronouns)
2. (social) gender, sex (social issues of being man or woman)

Usage notes

• Biological gender is called kön. The Latin word genus is used for grammar and more recently for gender studies.

Declension

Synonyms

• (grammar): kön

Related terms

References

• genus in Svenska Akademiens ordlista (SAOL)

Anagrams

• sugen, unges