Lexic.us

Definition 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.

Lexicographical Neighbors of Grammatical Gender

Literary usage of Grammatical gender

Below you will find example usage of this term as found in modern and/or classical literature:

1. The Encyclopedia Americana: A Library of Universal Knowledge (1919)
"If this method were used consistently throughout, then the English language might properly be said to possess grammatical gender. ..."

2. Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by the by Friedrich Max Müller (1879)
"It has generally been supposed that grammatical gender was the cause of ... No doubt, in languages in which the distinction of grammatical gender is ..."

3. A Grammar of the German Language: Designed for a Thoro and Practical Study by George Oliver Curme (1922)
"grammatical gender is determined, not by sex, but by the meaning and form ... By grammatical gender even nouns denoting things and abstract ideas are often ..."

4. Primitive Culture: Researches Into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy by Sir Edward Burnett Tylor (1891)
"Effect of Language in formation of Myth—Material Personification primary, Verbal Personification secondary—grammatical gender, male and female, ..."

5. A Middle English Reader by Oliver Farrar Emerson (1915)
"That grammatical gender had about disappeared in early Middle English is clear from the loss of feminine forms for the adjective and the pronoun (except the ..."

6. The German Language: Outlines of Its Development by Tobias Johann Casjen Diekhoff (1914)
"grammatical gender § 222. The Inconsistency of Gender Distinctions. Analogous to the difference of sex in ... The Probable Origin of grammatical gender. ..."

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