Gender

Gender, a distinction between words based on the difference between the sexes. Grammarians recognise three genders - masculine, feminine, and neuter - though the neuter is not really a gender, since it merely denotes that a word is neither masculine nor feminine. The fact that in ancient languages many lifeless objects are masculine or feminine instead of neuter may perhaps be attributed to the primitive view of the universe, which endowed all things with personality and consciousness. Then, later, words acquired a gender on account of the similarity of their endings to words already in existence. There is no neuter in Semitic languages, and it has disappeared in the Romance languages - words originally neuter having become masculine or feminine - but it remains in German and various other Aryan tongues. In English gender survives only in the personal pronouns (he, she, it, etc.), and a few other ancient forms.