grammatical gender

/grəˌmædəkəl ˌdʒɛndər/
IPA guide

Definitions of grammatical gender
  1. noun
    a grammatical category in inflected languages governing the agreement between nouns and pronouns and adjectives; in some languages it is quite arbitrary but in Indo-European languages it is usually based on sex or animateness
    synonyms: gender
    see moresee less
    types:
    feminine
    a gender that refers chiefly (but not exclusively) to females or to objects classified as female
    masculine
    a gender that refers chiefly (but not exclusively) to males or to objects classified as male
    neuter
    a gender that refers chiefly (but not exclusively) to inanimate objects (neither masculine nor feminine)
    type of:
    grammatical category, syntactic category
    (grammar) a category of words having the same grammatical properties
Cite this entry
Style:
MLA
  • MLA
  • APA
  • Chicago

Copy citation
DISCLAIMER: These example sentences appear in various news sources and books to reflect the usage of the word ‘grammatical gender'. Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Vocabulary.com or its editors. Send us feedback
Word Family