Gender, a grammatical distinction between words corresponding directly or metaphorically to the natural distinction of sex. Names applied to the male sex are said to be of the masculine gender; those applied to the female sex, feminine; while words that are neither masculine nor feminine are said to be neuter or of neither gender. In modern English we have no such thing as merely grammatical gender, save when sex is implied metaphorically to inanimate things (a ship, a steam-engine, &c.) by such a figure of speech as personification; but in Old English, as well as in Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, the greater part of inanimate things are either masculine or feminine, the others being neuter; and this distinction of gender is marked by the terminations of the nominative and other case-endings. Grammatical gender went gradually out of use after the Norman
Conquest, the northern dialects being the earliest to discard it. In Hebrew there is no neuter, all names being either masculine or feminine, as also in the modern Romance tongues, Italian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. German, again, in this particular resembles Old English and the classical tongues. See GRAMMAR.