shall lead them," but is masculine in the sentence Some words from Wordsworth, I have seen A curious child . . . applying to his ear Of animals, those with which man comes in contact often, or which arouse his interest most, are named by gender nouns, as in these sentences: Before the barn door strutted the gallant cock, that pattern of a husband, . . . clapping his burnished wings. — IRVING. Gunpowder... came to a stand just by the bridge, with a suddenness that had nearly sent his rider sprawling over his head. - Id. Other animals are not distinguished as to sex, but are spoken of as neuter, the sex being of no consequence. Not a turkey but he [Ichabod] beheld daintily trussed up, with its gizzard under its wing. — IRVING. He next stooped down to feel the pig, if there were any signs of life in it. - LAMB. either gender or neuter nouns, according to use. No "common 25. According to the definition, there can be not such thing as "common gender:" words either gender." distinguish sex (or the sex is distinguished by the context) or else they do not distinguish sex. If such words as parent, servant, teacher, ruler, relative, cousin, domestic, etc., do not show the sex to which the persons belong, they are neuter words. 26. Put in convenient form, the division of words according to sex, or the lack of it, is, — MASCULINE: Male beings. FEMININE: Female beings. Gender nouns Neuter nouns: Names of inanimate things, or of living beings whose sex cannot be determined. 27. The inflections for gender belong, of course, only to masculine and feminine nouns. Forms would be a more accurate word than inflections, since inflection applies only to the case of nouns. There are three ways to distinguish the genders: (1) By prefixing a gender word to another word. (2) By adding a suffix, generally to a masculine word. (3) By using a different word for each gender. I. Gender shown by Prefixes. 28. Usually the gender words he and she are prefixed to neuter words; as he-goat-she-goat, cock sparrow-hen sparrow, he-bear-she-bear. One feminine, woman, puts a prefix before the masculine man. Woman is a short way of writing wifeman. II. Gender shown by Suffixes. 29. By far the largest number of gender words are those marked by suffixes. In this particular the native endings have been largely supplanted by foreign suffixes. The native suffixes to indicate the feminine were -en and -ster. These remain in vixen and spinster, though both words have lost their original meanings. The word vixen was once used as the feminine of fox by the Southern-English. For fox they said vor; for from they said vram; and for the older word fat they said vat, as in wine vat. Hence vixen is for fyxen, from the masculine fox. Spinster is a relic of a large class of words that existed in Old and Middle English,1 but have now lost their original force as feminines. The old masculine answering to spinster was spinner; but spinster has now no connection with it. The foreign suffixes are of two kinds : fixes: These are Unaltered never used and little used. Slightly changed and widely used. (1) Those belonging to borrowed words, as Foreign sufczarina, señorita, executrix, donna. attached to foreign words, and are for words recognized as English. (2) That regarded as the standard or regular termination of the feminine, -ess (French esse, Low Latin issa), the one most used. The corresponding masculine may have the ending -er (-or), but in most cases it has not. Whenever we adopt a new masculine word, the feminine is formed by adding this termination -ess. Sometimes the -ess has been added to a word already feminine by the ending -ster; as seam-stress, song-str-ess. The ending -ster had then lost its force as a feminine suffix; it has none now in the words huckster, gamester, trickster, punster. 1 More for convenience than for absolute accuracy, the stages of our language have been roughly divided into three: — (1) Old English (with Anglo-Saxon) down to the twelfth century. (2) Middle English, from about the twelfth century to the sixteenth century. (3) Modern English, from about 1500 to the present time. B. GRAM. -3 Ending of 30. The ending -ess is added to many words masculine not changed. without changing the ending of the masculine; as, baron - baroness heiress Masculine ending dropped. Vowel dropped before adding -ess. heir The masculine ending may be dropped before the feminine -ess is added; as, Empress has been cut down from emperice (twelfth century) and emperesse (thirteenth century), from Latin imperatricem. Master and mistress were in Middle English maister— maistresse, from the Old French maistre — maistresse. 31. When the older -en and -ster went out of use as the distinctive mark of the feminine, the ending -ess, from the French -esse, sprang into a popularity much greater than at present. Instead of saying doctress, fosteress, wagoness, as was said in the sixteenth century, or servauntesse, teacheresse, neighboresse, frendesse, as in the fourteenth century, we have dispensed with the ending in many cases, and either use a prefix word or leave the masculine to do work for the feminine also. Thus, we say doctor (masculine and feminine) or woman doctor, teacher or lady teacher, neighbor (masculine and feminine), etc. We frequently use such words as author, editor, chairman, to repre sent persons of either sex. NOTE. There is perhaps this distinction observed: when we speak of a female as an active agent merely, we use the masculine termination, as, "George Eliot is the author of 'Adam Bede;"" but when we speak purposely to denote a distinction from a male, we use the feminine, as, "George Eliot is an eminent authoress." III. Gender shown by Different Words. 32. In some of these pairs, the feminine and the masculine are entirely different words; others have in their origin the same root. Some of them have an interesting history, and will be noted be Girl originally meant a child of either sex, and was used for male or female until about the fifteenth century. Drake is peculiar in that it is formed from a corresponding feminine which is no longer used. It is not connected historically with our word duck, |