grammatical gender
Americannoun
Usage
What is grammatical gender? Grammatical gender is a way of classifying nouns that unpredictably assigns them gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. For example, in French, the grammatical gender of la maison (“the house”) is classified as feminine, while le livre (“the book”) is classified as masculine. Grammatical gender is not used in English. Grammatical in this phrase means relating to grammar, which is basically the rules of how to construct sentences in a language. The word gender here is not really related to the way that humans identify themselves in real life. In many languages, the grammatical gender of a word affects how other words can be used with it in a sentence. The three most commonly used grammatical gender categories are masculine, feminine, and neuter, but each language differs. Grammatical gender is contrasted with natural gender or naturalistic gender, in which nouns are classified in ways that align with their real-world qualities. Girl and boy are examples of nouns with naturalistic gender. (In English, this matters because those words can be replaced with gendered pronouns like she and he.)
Etymology
Origin of grammatical gender
First recorded in 1870–75
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
One of the reasons Yautja has no grammatical gender is because that was most practical.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 10, 2025
Many transgender people want to erase grammatical gender terms altogether.
From New York Times ● Jul. 20, 2022
In fact, studies find that grammatical gender in natural languages does affect gender inequality and essentialism in gender categorization.
From Scientific American ● May 29, 2019
Tarpons, because of grammatical gender and size, are big guys.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 20, 2017
It may be mentioned that the total loss of grammatical gender in English, and the almost complete disappearance of cases, are purely phonetic phenomena.
From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 9, Slice 6 "English Language" to "Epsom Salts" by Various
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
