Gender in English

rdf:langString Gender in English

rdf:langString A system of grammatical gender, whereby every noun was treated as either masculine, feminine, or neuter, existed in Old English, but fell out of use during the Middle English period; therefore, Modern English largely does not have grammatical gender. Modern English lacks grammatical gender in the sense of all noun classes requiring masculine, feminine, or neuter inflection or agreement; however, it does retain features relating to natural gender with particular nouns and pronouns (such as woman, daughter, husband, uncle, he and she) to refer specifically to persons or animals of one or other sexes and neuter pronouns (such as it) for sexless objects. Also, in some cases, are used by some speakers when referring to ships (and more uncommonly some airplanes and analogous machinery), to churches, and to nation states and islands. Some aspects of gender usage in English have been influenced by the push towards a preference for gender-neutral language. This applies in particular to the 21st-century avoidance of the default generic he when referring to a person of unknown gender in favor of the neuter they as a third-person singular. Certain traditional feminine forms of nouns (such as authoress and poetess) are also increasingly avoided, with the male form of such nouns (author and poet) having become gender-neutral.