Questions regarding the grammatical gender of English words.
26
votes
6answers
20k views
Is it correct to use “their” instead of “his or her”?
Is this sentence grammatically correct?
Anyone who loves the English language should have a copy of this book in their bookcase.
or should it be:
Anyone who loves the English language should ...
84
votes
19answers
9k views
What is a feminine version of 'guys'?
I commonly use the word 'guys' to refer to a group of males colloquially. It's colloquial but not rude, off putting, condescending, patronizing (though I wouldn't use it with a group of men at a board ...
20
votes
4answers
3k views
Is it a good practice to refer to countries, ships etc using the feminine form?
While talking about ships and countries, is it a good practice to use the feminine form? For example:
"Her economy" - while referring to a country's economy
"Her flag (or deck etc)" - while ...
5
votes
4answers
5k views
Should I use “his/her” or “its”? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicates:
Gender neutral pronoun
Is it correct to use “their” instead of “his or her”?
I am writing a software documentation. I have this issue: I am ...
4
votes
2answers
1k views
A man's breast vs. a woman's breasts
Why is it that breast is used when referring to a man's chest, but breasts is used for a woman's? Could breast also mean a woman's chest, or do breasts have to be used when referring to a woman's ...
2
votes
3answers
345 views
Can the feminine pronouns be gender-neutral? [closed]
I know this sounds weird but I've been noticing a lot of texts on the Internet like this one:
"Any citizen is concerned with her well-being ...". The word in question is "her". To me it seems like in ...
11
votes
4answers
355 views
When referring to a noun, when does the gender matter?
In most languages, gender plays a much more important role than in English. Nevertheless, it is possible to refer to a noun using its gender.
The ship was launched on 4 October 1853. Tayleur left ...
7
votes
1answer
2k views
Female Actor or Actress
I've recently and very annoyingly noticed the word actor used for female actresses in the Indian print media.
I have a few questions :
a) Is this the correct usage of the word?
b) Is this an ...
2
votes
2answers
522 views
Speaking about someone of unknown gender [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
Gender neutral pronoun
For example, user clicked the button. I don't know if the user is male or female, what gender should I use? Now I read a book, where the user is ...
12
votes
8answers
1k views
Are there sentences in languages which use grammatical gender that lose meaning when translated into English?
English nouns which don't denote people or animals with natural gender do not (apart from a few rare examples) use grammatical gender. So for example, "table" is always an "it" in English, whereas it ...
14
votes
4answers
660 views
Advice for using multiple same-gender personal pronouns in the same sentence
I have often struggled with sentences that contain two characters of the same gender. For example, if there are two females, Alice and Carol, then the following sentence can be confusing.
Alice ...
13
votes
2answers
555 views
Is “so” more feminine than “very”?
Many Japanese textbooks of English mention the "feminine 'so'": the use of "so" for "very" is more typical of a feminine speaker. I don't think this is true in the US (I learned English living in ...
10
votes
4answers
6k views
What is the male equivalent of “mistress” in formal English?
The mistress definition, Oxford dictionary
a woman having an extramarital sexual relationship, esp. with a married man
I am looking for the male equivalent of 'mistress' as defined above. Some ...
6
votes
4answers
558 views
Gender-neutral Forms
What is the unisex form of a word like fisherman? Do you have to use fisherman and fisherwoman separately, or is fisherperson acceptable? I couldn’t find a dictionary with the word …
In general, what ...
4
votes
1answer
170 views
What is the origin of “-ix” as a feminine variation?
Some words are made feminine by altering the suffix to be -ix. Examples:
dominator → dominatrix
executor → executrix
rector → rectrix
What is the origin of this variation?
From my 5 years of ...
4
votes
5answers
406 views
Using “she” with gender-neutral nouns
The song “Frozen” from Madonna’s Ray of Light (1998) contains the lyrics:
Love is a bird, she needs to fly,
Let all the hurt inside of you die.
Does she refer to bird or love? And why is it ...
3
votes
1answer
706 views
Difference between female and male usage [closed]
What explains the difference of a de facto larger frequency of vowels of one writer compared to another? In the statistics data I examined, a vowel had higher probability in the text from the female ...
2
votes
3answers
348 views
Personal pronouns for animals
In my native language German, every animal has an article. This is understandable, if one wants for example to distinguish a male pig (boar) from a female pig (sow). But if one just talks about the ...
1
vote
0answers
29 views
Addressing someone with no specified gender [duplicate]
How do you address someone whose gender is not specified, when you are writing something? Take this as an example:
The teacher said we should go, ____ said we are good pupils.
Would you insert ...
-2
votes
1answer
307 views
An appropriate word to describe words that are common in natural gender
Generally speaking, the notion of "gender", more precisely of "grammatical gender", is used to classify nouns into groups. As an instance, in Italian language there are two categories labeled ...
