The Noun ; Gender

You know that living beings are of either the male or the female sex. Now compare the words in the following pairs:

Boy – Girl

Lion – Lioness

Hero – Heroine

Cock-sparrow – Hen-sparrow

What do you notice?

The first word of each pair is the name of a male sex.

The second word of each pair is the name of a female sex.

A noun that denotes a male sex is said to be of the Masculine Gender.

A noun that denotes a female sex is said to be of the Feminine Gender.

A noun that denotes either a male or a female is said to be of the Common Gender; as

Parent, child, friend, pupil, servant, thief, relation, enemy, cousin, person, orphan, student, baby, monarch, neighbor, infant.

A noun that denotes a thing that is neither male nor female (i.e. thing without life) is said to be of the Neuter Gender;as,

Book, pen, room, tree.

It will be thus seen that in Modern English, the Gender of a noun is entirely a matter of sex or the absence of sex. It has nothing to do with the form of a noun, which determines it gender in many other languages, e.g. in Urdu where bagiche is masculine and lakri is feminine.