4 Types of Gender with Examples in Grammar

We are going to discuss about grammatical gender in detail, how they are categorized along with their 4 types. And at later section we’ll see the short description of each of the different type and examples to better understand the idea behind.

In grammar, there is a classification of a Noun or Pronoun as Masculine or Feminine. Therefore, gender is the sexual classification in grammar. Gender comes from Latin genus, meaning kind or sort.

We know that living beings are either the male or the female sex.

Category ACategory B
BoyGirl
BullCow
ManWoman
DogBitch

The words in the first column under Category A are the names of male animals.
And, the words in the second column under Category  B are the names of female animals.

There are a total of Four different types of genders that apply to living and non-living objects.

Now in this section of the article we’ll see these four types of genders of nouns namely masculine, feminine, common and neuter along with their examples.

1. Masculine Gender

Masculine gender is used to denote that a sex of a noun is male.

Let us see some examples to understand this :

  • actor
  • author
  • bachelor
  • boy
  • brother, dad etc.

Masculine Gender is often applied to objects which are a symbol of strength, violence, sublimity and superiority. for examples Death, time, winter, summer, the sun, fear, love etc

2. Feminine Gender

Feminine gender is used to denote that a sex of a noun is female.

Let us see some examples of Feminine gender nouns :

  • actress
  • girl
  • sister
  • lady, mother etc.

Feminine Gender is often applied to objects which are a symbol of beauty, gentleness gracefulness, fertility, softness, sweetness and weakness etc. let’s see some examples of these kind.

  • The moon
  • the earth
  • spring
  • liberty
  • charity
  • mercy
  • peace
  • religion
  • spring
  • truth
  • names of countries, cars, ships and of arts and sciences.

It is always good to have a list of masculine and feminine nouns so that you can make out the difference in gender by just looking at the word itself. If you know how feminine words are formed from masculine then it becomes a whole lot easier for you.

3. Common Gender

A noun that denotes either a male or a female sex is called common gender. Besides, Masculine Gender and Feminine Gender, there is a gender which is said to be the Common Gender.

Therefore common gender is mostly used when we don’t have any information of the sex of noun.

Let’s see some example of common gender nouns :

  • parent
  • child
  • pupil
  • servant
  • friend
  • thief
  • relation,
  • enemy
  • cousin
  • orphan
  • student
  • person
  • baby,
  • guardian
  • monarch, infant, tutor etc.

4. Neuter Gender

A noun that is used to denotes a non-living and lifeless things is called a neuter gender. It is a noun that denotes a thing that is neither male nor female.

Note :  Neuter means neither, i.e. neither male nor female.

Let us now see some examples of neuter gender nouns :

  • Book
  • pen
  • table
  • chair
  • radio
  • cloth
  • bus
  • motor, song etc.

Let us summarize the concepts with the help of Gender table.

MasculineFeminineCommonNeuter
Used to denote male sexIt is used to denote female sexused to denote a common sex which can either be male or female.Gender that applies to life less things
example : father, brother, uncle etc.some examples : mother, sister etc.example :  baby, friend etc.for example : table, chair etc.

I hope this article enhanced your learning on genders and you can now distinguish them properly.

Keep exploring EnglishBix for resources to learn different concepts of English grammar.

Leave a Comment