Gender
The English noun gender is derived from the Old French word genre, meaning "kind of thing". It goes back to the Latin word genus (meaning "kind", "species"). It has several meanings in modern usage:
- The perceived masculinity or femininity of a person or characteristic. A person's aggregate gender is complex, encompassing countless characteristics of appearance, speech, movement and more. This aggregate gender is often not easily categorized simply, although society tends to assume a simply binary organization. Gender meanings are constantly being renegotiated, as, for example, the color pink, considered masculine in the early 1900s, is now seen as feminine, and vice versa for blue. Gender is also evolving in this usage from noun to adjective: it is increasingly being seen as an attribute (like color) rather than as a distinct entity in itself. See gender identity, gender role, queer studies, list of transgender-related topics, gender (sociology)
- Gender is often, but decreasingly, used as a synonym for sex, referring to the physical polarity of anatomy which is commonly used to differentiate male from female.
- In manufacturing, Gender is used to denote polarity of mating connectors that have "male" plugs and "female" sockets. For an example in this context see gender changer.
Apart from these meanings deriving from Latin "genus", it can also be these:
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