Noun

Concept -Masculine, Feminine, & Neuter

What is Gender?

• Gender is the term used to show if a person or animal is a male or a female.
• Words used to describe a gender are nouns that answer the questions ‘What is it?’ and ‘Who is it?’. These words give names to things, people, animals and places.
• Some can neither be male nor female, which are categorized as neuter gender.
• In the sentences given below, words like ‘girl’ belong to the feminine gender, and ‘boy’ belong to the masculine gender. But the word table is a non–living thing which is neither a male nor female, so it is described as neuter gender.

Examples:

a) Riya is a pretty girl.	b) The table is clean	c) Little Sam sat on the chair.

1. Masculine Gender
• All males whether it is a person or an animal who show masculine qualities are categorized as the masculine gender. For example, man, prince, hero, king, lion, etc.
• The nouns used to describe a male are nouns of the masculine gender.

Examples:

a) A man helped me, when I fell from my bicycle.	b) He is the prince of England.	c) Lion is the king of jungle.

2. Feminine Gender:
• Any person showing the qualities of a female is called the feminine gender. For instance, woman, queen, lioness, etc.
• These nouns that refer to feminine qualities are therefore called feminine gender.

Examples:

a) The woman at the mall was very helpful.	b) The lioness fought for her cubs.	c) She is the queen of England.

3. Neuter Gender:

Things that cannot be categorized as male or female gender. Hence the words like house, knife, tree, chair, cupboard are termed as neuter gender.

Examples:

a) cupboard.	b) chair	c) tree

Exceptions:

• The pronoun ‘He’ is used for a singular masculine noun, ‘she’ is used for singular feminine noun, and ‘it’ is used for a singular neuter noun.
• The pronoun ‘they ‘and ‘they may be used for masculine and feminine or neuter.

Changing Masculine Nouns into Feminine Nouns

Nouns can be changed from one form to the other. Some feminine nouns can be made from masculine nouns by the adding the suffix ‘ess’ to the noun.

Example:

Exceptions:

1. Sometimes the noun form does not take the suffix ‘ess’ instead the word changes completely.

Examples:

Masculine Gender	Feminine Gender
King	Queen
Brother	Sister
father	Mother
Uncle	Aunt

2. Many nouns refer to people’s roles and a job which do not use a masculine or feminine noun but are neuter nouns. These words can be used irrespective of the gender of the person. For example, cousin, teacher, doctor, friend, & actor.

Examples:

a) Eva is my friend. She is a doctor.	b) Rohit is my brother. He is a doctor.