"Gender" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to their ships, choosing, whenever possible, appropriate ones; while the less courteous Romans bestowed masculine names on theirs. Though we may not have followed the Greek rule, we to the present day always look upon a ship as of the feminine gender. ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... amusing and provocative of much merriment. Here is one. The writer is one "Bill Pumpkin," H.M.S. "Ugly Mug," who states that the holder, Mary Brown (who does not know Mary the ubiquitous Mary), "has a strange knack of forgetting the gender of a shirt, for it not unfrequently happens that you may find her with that article of male apparel on her own 'proper person,' otherwise, he says, she is all that can be desired." The said Mary B being unable to read English—or for ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... affectation, which is simply and without exaggeration what the stage commonly gives us for a fine lady; an old woman in her hands was a thorough woman, thoroughly old, not a cackling young person of epicene gender. She played Sir Harry Wildair like a man, which is how he ought to be played (or, which is better still, not at all), so that Garrick acknowledged her as a male rival, and abandoned the ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... admirable old glass. I spent half an hour there one morning, listening to what the church had to say, in perfect solitude. Not a worshipper entered, not even an old man with a broom. I have always thought there be a sex in fine buildings; and Saint Julian, with its noble nave, is of the gender of the name ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... more abstract principles, such as the formation of the compound tenses, the formation and the use of the passive voice, and so on. But attempts at inductive teaching of concrete elements of mechanical memory, such as the gender and plural of nouns, or the principal parts of strong verbs, are a misunderstanding of the principles of induction. It goes without saying that thorough drill is much more valuable than the most explicit explanation. It ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... a point to note of special interest in their language. All the nouns have a masculine and a feminine gender, and the feminine nouns immensely predominate. The sun is feminine, the moon masculine. In the pronouns there is one form only in the plural, and that is feminine. It may seem that these matters—noted so briefly—are unimportant; but it is such little things that deserve attentive ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... passed on, and took a seat with one of the superfluous men, for contrary to the rule on most such occasions, the male gender was in excess of the female. I had not expected him to return to Miss Sprig; men always become satiated with such girls, soon ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... "this" does not belong to the word "bread," that is, it does not mean that this bread is my body. For the word "bread" in the original Greek is of the masculine, and the word "this" is of the neuter gender. But it alludes to the action of the breaking of the bread, from which the following new meaning will result. "This breaking of the bread, which you now see me perform, is a symbol or representation of the giving, or as St. Paul has it, of the ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... canalla is feminine in its usual collective meaning: rabble. Applied to an individual, however, it agrees in gender. ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... partly upon my work, and partly upon the little income left by my grandfather, Thomas Hoyle. But, compared with Hockin, we were well off; and he did his best to swindle us. Luckily all my faith in mankind was confined to the feminine gender, and not much even of that survived. In a very little time I saw that people may repudiate law as well from being below ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... Now you may write, at the head of the first column, the word Nouns, and at the head of the second, Nom., for nominative. Then rule a line for the third column. What shall this contain?" "The declension." "Yes; and the fourth?" "Gender." ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... invented his spinning-machine, a village wit called it a "jenny." The machine was fine, delicate, subtle, and as spinning was a woman's business anyway, the new machine was parsed in the feminine gender. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... of me, Madam?" With the pirsistent obstinacy of the feminine gender, she refused to notice me. So I thought she was kinder "set up on her ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... decent, communistic femino-masculine honor demands that I refrain from any manoeuvers in his direction to attract his thoughts and attention to the feminine me. I can only meet him on the ordinary grounds of fellowship. And I suppose the glad-to-see him coming up the street was of the neuter gender, but it was ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... not curl'd In fronded forms, or petrified in tone. High latitudes of thought gave breath to him; The paps he suck'd ran not false shame for milk; No bastard he! but virile truth in limb And soul. A Titan mocking at the silk That bound the wings of song. A tongue of flame, Whose ashes gender an immortal name. ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler
... of those disgusting creatures of the feminine or neuter gender, who hold conventions for the discussion of "Women's Rights," obtruded into the presence of the wife of Kossuth, just before the Hungarian left England, with an address, which, in addition to expressions of sympathy, contained an intimation that ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... multiplication of the old creation They're sure to hold forth as a weighty command; And what law can hinder old Adam to gender, And propagate men to replenish the land? But truly he never obey'd the lawgiver, For when the old serpent had open'd his eyes, He sought nothing greater than just to please nature, And work like a serpent in ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... for the manner of the Arabs. One point of resemblance between the new Hebrew and the Arabic love poetry is obscured in the translation. In the Hebrew of Samuel the Nagid the terms of endearment, applied though they are to a girl, are all in the masculine gender. This, as Dr. Egers observes, is a common feature of the Arabic and Persian love poetry of ancient and modern times. An Arab poet will praise his fair one's face as "bearded" with garlands of lilies. Hafiz describes a girl's cheeks as roses within a net of violets, the net referring to the ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... of the prophets the feminine gender is often used when speaking of the House of Israel, and the masculine when denoting the House of Judah. Quite frequently Israel is spoken of as a divorced woman, as being cast off, and as being barren. Judah ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... hemp, horse, or curse according to the quality he gives to the sound. The language remains in a primitive state, without inflexion, declension, or distinction of parts of speech. The order in a sentence is: subject, verb, complement direct, complement indirect. Gender is formed by distinctive particles; number by prefixing numerals, etc.; cases by position or appropriate prepositions. Adjectives precede nouns; position determines comparison; and absence of punctuation ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... terrestrial; from quimen to know, quimchi wise; and these, by the interposition of no, become negative, as tuenotu not terrestrial, quimnochi ignorant. The adjectives, participles, and derivative pronouns are unsusceptible of number or gender, in which they resemble the English; yet when it is necessary to distinguish the sexes, alca is used for the masculine, and domo for the feminine. The comparative is formed by prefixing jod or doi to the positive, and the superlative by cad or mu. Thus from chu limpid, are formed ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... yachting party, or a hunting party, or were shipwrecked. I then recounted the floating rumours concerning the hooded lady, the owl, and Master B.: with others, still more filmy, which had floated about during our occupation, relative to some ridiculous old ghost of the female gender who went up and down, carrying the ghost of a round table; and also to an impalpable Jackass, whom nobody was ever able to catch. Some of these ideas I really believe our people below had communicated to one another in some diseased way, without conveying them in words. ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... there are many of these, and that next to the author of evil, they are the greatest scourge to their people. The term witch, by them, is used both in the masculine and feminine gender, and denotes a person to whom the evil deity has delegated power to inflict diseases, cause death, blast corn, bring bad weather, and in short to cause almost any calamity to which they are liable. With this impression, and believing ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... Summa Aurea] which the Latin renders "articulus," signifies a fitting together of distinct parts: wherefore the small parts of the body which fit together are called the articulations of the limbs. Likewise, in the Greek grammar, articles are parts of speech which are affixed to words to show their gender, number or case. Again in rhetoric, articles are parts that fit together in a sentence, for Tully says (Rhet. iv) that an article is composed of words each pronounced singly and separately, thus: ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... of his heroic exploits, certainly. You ladies cannot imagine what tyranny you practice upon the masculine gender when you constrain them to this terrible servitude. To wear chains is a mere jest, but when you bind a man with a skein of thread, a mere gossamer, in fact, and then tell him he must not break it asunder, that is cruelty indeed! Why don't the English invent a machine ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... the AEsir, or children of Odin, and their son was Day, a child light and beautiful, like its father. The Sun and Moon were two children, the Moon being the boy, and the Sun the girl; which peculiarity of gender still holds in the German language. The Edda gives them chariot and horses with which to drive daily round the heavens, and supposes their speed to be occasioned by their fear of two gigantic wolves, from Jotunheim, ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... his image; he was the father and head of a family with a wife and son. The wife, it is true, was but the colourless reflection of the god, often indeed but the feminine Baalah, whom the Semitic languages with their feminine gender required to exist by the side of the masculine Baal. But this was only in accordance with the Semitic conception of woman as the lesser man, his servant rather than his companion, his shadow rather than ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce
... some. You sit there like a stone. Recite a poem, or tell us something about your school. Would you believe it, Juffrouw Mabbel, he knows a whole poem by heart. And he has memorized all the verbs of the feminine gender." ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... is the power of nouns and pronouns to denote sex. Nouns or pronouns denoting males are of the masculine gender; those denoting females are of the feminine gender; and those denoting things without animal life are of ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... his hopes as well as another, had hitherto sate sulky enough in the armchair formerly appropriated to the deceased, and in which she would have been not a little scandalised to have seen this colossal specimen of the masculine gender lolling at length. His employment had been rolling up into the form of a coiled snake the long lash of his horse-whip, and then by a jerk causing it to unroll itself into the middle of the floor. The first words he said when he had digested the shock contained a magnanimous ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... diversion. You will, therefore, Vernon, write out and bring to me to-morrow a word-for-word English-Latin translation of the Ode, together with a full list of all adjectives—an adjective is not a verb, Vernon, as the Lower Third will tell you—all adjectives, their number, case, and gender. Even now I haven't begun to deal with ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... 20, 1919, the Council of Yukon Territory amended its Election Law to read: "In this Ordinance, unless the context otherwise requires, words importing the masculine gender include females and the words 'voter' and 'elector' include both men and women ... and under it women shall have the same ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... is largely polysyllabic. It is burdened with personal pronouns, and its adjectives have numerous changes in addition to their degrees of comparison. We find no inflections to suggest case or gender. The adjective mpolo, which means "large," carries seven or eight forms. While it is impossible to tell whether a noun is masculine, feminine, or neuter, they use one adjective for all four declensions, changing its form ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... is a noun or a verb. A noun is a word of one person with gender and case; as, I is onelie of the first person; thou is onelie of the second; and al other nounes are onelie the third person; as, thou, Thomas, head, hand, stone, blok, except they be joined with ...
— Of the Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britan Tongue - A Treates, noe shorter than necessarie, for the Schooles • Alexander Hume
... Chippewa, must agree in number and tense with the noun. They must also agree in gender, that is, verbs animate must have nouns animate. They must also have animate pronouns and animate adjectives. Vitality, or the want of vitality, seems to be the distinction which the inventors of the language, seized upon, to set up the great ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... think it's quite nice to take a meal occasionally without the presence of anybody of the masculine gender." ...
— Elsie's Kith and Kin • Martha Finley
... philosophy better than any attempt at interpretation, and the humor of the telling only intensifies the tragedy. "The name of the father of Ginx's Baby was Ginx. By a not unexceptional coincidence, its mother was Mrs. Ginx. The gender of Ginx's Baby was masculine." That is the first paragraph of the book, and there you have a hint of the flippant flavor; also a very strong suggestion of Mr. Charles Dickens. The hero of the book was a thirteenth child. Ominously humorous! The mother previously had ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... you are laying down a rule, you are right," said Raymond. "But this is a particular case and an exception. We owe some duties to the feminine gender as well as to patriotism. The greater shouldn't always be ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... mistakes were frequently made here, by one of the Badagrian messengers, who acted also as an interpreter, as regards the gender and relationship of individuals, such as father for mother, son for daughter, boy for girl, and vice versa. He informed Richard Lander that a brother of his, who was the friend of Ebo, and resided with him, begged his permission to come and see them; of course they expected to see a gentleman ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... idea of God or mind is both personal and impersonal. Nor in ascribing, as appears to us, both these attributes to him, and in speaking of God both in the masculine and neuter gender, did he seem to himself inconsistent. For the difference between the personal and impersonal was not marked to him as to ourselves. We make a fundamental distinction between a thing and a person, while to Plato, by the help of various intermediate abstractions, such as end, good, cause, they ...
— Philebus • Plato
... to the application of this title to his professional brother who has no degree; and in a university town to say that John Smith is a doctor would be inconveniently ambiguous. 'Medical man' is cumbrous, and has the further disadvantage (in these days) of not being of common gender. Now the lack of any proper word for a meaning so constantly needing to be expressed is certainly a serious defect in modern (insular) English. The Americans have some right to crow over us here; but their 'physician' is a long word; and though ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... seldom find Lavish'd by Nature on one happy mind, 140 A motley figure, of the Fribble tribe, Which heart can scarce conceive, or pen describe, Came simpering on—to ascertain whose sex Twelve sage impannell'd matrons would perplex. Nor male, nor female; neither, and yet both; Of neuter gender, though of Irish growth; A six-foot suckling, mincing in Its gait; Affected, peevish, prim, and delicate; Fearful It seem'd, though of athletic make, Lest brutal breezes should too roughly shake 150 Its tender form, and savage motion spread, O'er Its pale cheeks, the horrid manly red. Much ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... so long and he listened so hard That anon he grew ever so tender, For it's everywhere known That the feminine tone Gets away with all masculine gender! He up and he wooed her with soldierly zest But all she'd reply to the love he professed Were these plaintive words (which perhaps you ...
— Love-Songs of Childhood • Eugene Field
... rabbit, he, the one, animate, sitting, in the objective case; for the form of a verb to kill would have to be selected, and the verb changes its form by inflection and incorporated particles to denote person, number, and gender as animate or inanimate, and gender as standing, sitting, or lying, and case; and the form of the verb would also express whether the killing was done accidentally or purposely, and whether it was by shooting or by some other process, and, if by shooting, whether ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... purposely, killed, by shooting an arrow, he, the one animate, sitting, in the objective case." "For the form of the verb to kill would have to be selected, and the verb changes its form by inflection, and by incorporated particles, to denote person, number and gender, as animate or inanimate, as ...
— The Dakotan Languages, and Their Relations to Other Languages • Andrew Woods Williamson
... Remember that the relative pronoun agrees in gender, number, and person with its antecedent; that its case depends upon its use. How are the person and number of ...
— Ritchie's Fabulae Faciles - A First Latin Reader • John Kirtland, ed.
... loved a lass, For she was tall and slender; Amas, amat—she laid me flat, Though of the feminine gender. ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... to be obliged to call lifeless things by names connoting sex, and therefore connoting, not only activity, but also life and personality? We explain it by the theory that man called lifeless things male or female—by using gender-terminations—as a result of his habit of regarding lifeless things as personal beings; that habit, again, being the result of his consciousness of himself ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... bank-books of their remembrance, to have transferred all the stock of filial affection into their mother's name. Mr. Bagnet is one of these. Perhaps his exalted appreciation of the merits of the old girl causes him usually to make the noun-substantive "goodness" of the feminine gender. ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... wreaths; and with his staff Hard smote them;—instant alter'd was his sex. Wonderous! he woman of a man became, Seven winters so he liv'd:—the eight, again He spy'd the same; and cry'd,—"If such your power, "That whoso strikes you must their gender change, "Once more I'll try the spell." Straight as the blow The snakes receiv'd, his pristine form return'd: Hence was he chosen, in the strife jocose, As umpire; and ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... had a mother, it wouldn't have mattered, because she would have known it was a screw he had lost, and she would have known just what comfort he would have needed; whereas a Fraulein would know nothing about a screw, beyond the German for it, and the gender, of course. And of what use is that to a child? It may sound very unconventional, and I suppose it was so, to go to a strange house and ask for Thomas, and my only excuse a small ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... was tenanted by sundry younger fry of the feminine gender, of various ages, who met Elizabeth with wonder equal to her own, and a sort of mixed politeness and curiosity to which her experience had no parallel. By the fireside sat the old grandam, very ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... all England no chance of subsistence but by teaching—that almost ineffectual teaching, which can never countervail the education of circumstances, and for which not one in a thousand is fit—or by being a superior Miss Nares—the feminine gender of ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... in a white robe down to the feet; they fill her eyes with the milk of human kindness and her mouth with the tender words of forgiveness. But JUSTICE is a very different personification in their eye. He is not only masculine as to gender, but all his looks and ways have an air of condemnation in them. He is a dark-faced, frowning judge, forever watching with keenest eye not only the outward life of every man, but his mind and heart within; and is always ready to pass judgment against every one guilty ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... femininity we have two types—one, the business man; the other, an individual without gender, impersonal, capable. She never does anything ill-bred, certainly, but one no more thinks of specifying that she is a lady than that her hair is black; it isn't ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... madam," cries the doctor, with a feigned seriousness; "I say, a boy in the fourth form at Eton would be whipt, or would deserve to be whipt at least, who made the neuter gender agree with the feminine. You have heard, however, that Virgil left his AEneid incorrect; and, perhaps, had he lived to correct it, we should not have seen the faults ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... Paris cater to women; a large majority of the smart shops in London cater to men. It shows in their voices; for cities have voices just as individuals have voices. New York is not yet old enough to have found its own sex. It belongs still to the neuter gender. New York is not even a noun—it's a verb transitive; but its voice is a female voice, just as Paris' voice is. New York, like Paris, is full of strident, shrieking sounds, shrill outcries, hysterical babblings—a women's bridge-whist club at the hour of casting up the score; but London now is different. ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... and the Father.—The revised version gives for John 10:30: "I and the Father are one" instead of "I and my Father are one." By "the Father" the Jews rightly understood the Eternal Father, God. In the original Greek "one" appears in the neuter gender, and therefore expresses oneness in attributes, power, or purpose, and not a oneness of personality which would have required the masculine form. For treatment of the unity of the Godhead, and the separate personality of each Member, see Articles of Faith, ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... folly in excepting my own strumpets from the general corruption,—albeit a two months' weakness is better than ten years. I have one request to make, which is, never mention a woman again in any letter to me, or even allude to the existence of the sex. I won't even read a word of the feminine gender;—it must ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... themselves, by effeminate affections, that, if a lady's cap was put on this head, Master Jacky might be taken for Miss Jenny [puts a lady's cap on the head of Master Jacky]; therefore grammarians can neither rank them as masculine or feminine, so set them down of the doubtful gender. ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens
... him, "O Manjab, verily the place of the Kings in privacy is also the place for laying aside gravity." Said Manjab, "O Prince of True Believers, to-morrow night (Inshallah!) I will tell thee a tale in brief concerning the freaks of the gender feminine, and what things they do with their mates." Accordingly when night came on, the Caliph sent for and summoned Manjab to the presence, and when he came there he kissed ground and said, "An it be thy will, O Commander of the Faithful, that I relate thee aught concerning the wiles ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... great Rich, who turns men into monkeys, wheel-barrows, and whatever else best humours his fancy, hath so strangely metamorphosed the human shape; nor the great Cibber, who confounds all number, gender, and breaks through every rule of grammar at his will, hath so distorted the English language as thou dost metamorphose and distort the ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... excited, and, one day, instead of knocking at the door, as usual, the instant he reached it, he applied his ear to the key-hole, and like Bottom, in the Midsummer Night's Dream, 'spied a voice,' which he guessed to be of the feminine gender, and knew to be not Scythrop's, whose deeper tones he distinguished at intervals. Having attempted in vain to catch a syllable of the discourse, he knocked violently at the door, and roared for immediate admission. The voices ceased, the accustomed rolling sound was heard, the ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... with in the chapters on imagination, sympathy and sensibility, vanity and temper. The masculine pronoun he, has been used for grammatical convenience, not at all because we agree with the prejudiced, and uncourteous grammarian, who asserts, "that the masculine is the more worthy gender." ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... is the name of males, As ox, or horse, or father, Is masculine in gender, dear; While cow, and mare, and mother, And all the names of females, child, Are feminine, 'tis true; Now tell me all the names you know, And tell their gender, too. But you will find there's many a noun Not male, nor female either, As chair, and book; and such ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... over the invasion of their territories by a man and a gentleman. He was a half-pay captain, and had obtained some situation on a neighbouring railroad, which had been vehemently petitioned against by the little town; and if, in addition to his masculine gender, and his connection with the obnoxious railroad, he was so brazen as to talk of being poor—why, then, indeed, he must be sent to Coventry. Death was as true and as common as poverty; yet people never spoke about that, loud out in the streets. ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... He would talk to her amiably when he met her at the Opera; but, if she invited him to dinner, he invented an excuse, if possible, for not going. "Don't speak to me," he would say, "of this writer of the neuter gender. Nature ought to have given her more ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... Person, Number, Gender, and Case. Person is that relation existing between the speaker, those addressed and the subject under consideration, whether by discourse or correspondence. The Persons are First, Second and Third and they represent respectively ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... the orchestra still makes me smile. You know, I suppose, it is entirely of the female gender, and that nothing is more common than to see a delicate white hand journeying across an enormous double bass, or a pair of roseate cheeks puffing, with all their efforts, at a French horn. Some that are grown old and Amazonian, who have abandoned their fiddles and their lovers, ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... which had come about in his appearance— for, after all, I told myself that it was impossible that I could have been such a simpleton as to have been mistaken on such a question as gender—was heightened by the self-evident fact that, very recently, he had been engaged in some pitched battle; some hand to hand, and, probably, discreditable encounter, from which he had borne away uncomfortable proofs of his opponent's prowess. His ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... on lines in the clothes-yard to air; for when once the spirit of enterprise has fairly possessed a group of women, it assumes the form of a "prophetic fury," and carries them beyond themselves. Let not any ignorant mortal of the masculine gender, at such hours, rashly dare to question the promptings of the genius that inspires them. Spite of all the treatises that have lately appeared, to demonstrate that there are no particular inherent diversities between men and women, we ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... rather required that each note shall be maltreated. From the viewpoint of the historian of culture it is an important fact that the first half of the eighteenth century had not yet acquired an ear for the sentimental, feminine adagio. The adagios of Bach and Haendel are all of the masculine gender. And then what a remarkable alteration of the musical ear took place, when, in the second half of the same century, the soft-as-butter adagios of the composers of the day all at once caused every beautiful soul to melt with tender emotion! At the same time that ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... thinke the rules of Philosophie may easelie resolue a man of the contrarie: For it is a sure principle of that arte, that nothing can be diuided in sexes, except such liuing bodies as must haue a naturall seede to genere by. But we know spirites hath no seede proper to themselues, nor yet can they gender one with ...
— Daemonologie. • King James I
... never very sure of herself under Rebecca's fire; "but though we often speak of a baby, a chicken, or a kitten as 'it,' they are really masculine or feminine gender, not neuter." ...
— The Flag-raising • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... here already assumes a slight tinge of the comic. But let us go further still, and suppose that our attention is attracted to the material side of the metaphor by the choice of a relationship which is incompatible with the gender of the two words composing the metaphorical expression: we get a laughable result. Such is the well-known saying, also attributed to M. Prudhomme, "Tous les arts (masculine) sont soeurs (feminine)." "He is always running after a joke," was said in Boufflers' presence regarding a ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... intelligence, however, which we have lately received, the work of revolution is no longer confined to the Old World, nor to the masculine gender. The flag of independence has been hoisted, for the second time, on this side of the Atlantic; and a solemn league and covenant has just been entered into by a Convention of women at Seneca Falls, to "throw off the despotism under which they are groaning, and provide ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... least some saltatory exhibition; but, alack! she remained sotto voce and hermetically sealed; and though other characters, in addition to the elderly gentlemen, appeared, they were all exclusively masculine in gender, and there was nothing done but to converse by twos and threes. When the third portion opened with a long-desiderated peep of petticoats, I told my neighbour confidently that now at last we were to see this dancing girl and the abduction; but she replied that it was not so, for ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... such effectual application as alarmed every soul in the family. In a moment she was surrounded by Hatchway, Pipes, and all the rest of the servants half-dressed; but seeing none of the feminine gender appear, she began to storm at the sloth and laziness of the maids, who, she observed, ought to have been at work an hour at least before she called; and then, for the first time, understood that no woman was permitted to ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... conditions of a scientific hypothesis. No man who is cautious would dream of trusting to an explanation of this kind simply because it explained one particular set of facts. Before you can possibly be safe in dealing with Nature—who is very properly made of the feminine gender, on account of the astonishing tricks which she plays upon her admirers!—I say before you can be safe in dealing with Nature, you must get two or three kinds of cross proofs, so as to make sure not only that your hypothesis fits that particular set of facts, ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... am!" Martha returned with feeling. "I'd kinder counted on you for—for what they calls moral support, that bein' the kind the male gender is mainly good for, these days. But, of course, if you ain't been invited, it wouldn't be genteel for you to press yourself. I can understand your feelin's. They does credit to your head an' to your heart. As I said ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... not to the breach of Christian peace and concord. Charity envieth not, or is not zealous. When zeal wants charity, it is not zeal but envy. And hence it is that there are so frequent and fervent exhortations to avoid such questions as may gender strifes, and contentions, and malice. Now certainly there was some truth in them, and something of conscience also in them. Yet he dissuades entirely the prosecution of them to the rigour, as men are apt ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... I prefer his frank sincerity, his bravery under stress, his worldly poise, his calm exterior, which does conceal the fiery depths of his nature; in fact, all his so-called animal attributes I prefer, to the more sophisticated allure of his human gender." Anthony laid a strong hand on the little beast's shoulder, while the French woman regarded him curiously out of long ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill
... from the Zone. In the Canal Record, the government organ, the government commissary advertised a sale of excellent $7 rain-coats at $1 each. The "Record"! It is like reading it in the Bible. Witness the rush of bargain hunters, who, it proves, are by no means of one gender. Yet those splendid rain-coats, as manager, clerks, and even negro sweepers well knew and could not refrain from snickering to themselves at thought of, were just as rain-proof as a poor grade of cheese-cloth. I do not speak from hear-say ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... Covent Garden audience is accustomed to, and this superfluity is resented by those who come for the singing, and who, if any talking is to be done, like to do it themselves. The three young ladies who go about together as a perpetual trio, suggest the notion of a light and airy version, feminine gender, of the three Anabaptists in the Prophete. M. ISNARDON as Des Grieux, pere, a character that might be operatically nearly related to Germont, pere, in La Traviata, was impressively dramatic, but decidedly disappointing in his one great song, which ought to be ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 30, 1891 • Various
... as her mistress, just a step above her in the social scale; and although the class contains among them many excellent, kind-hearted women, it also contains some very rough specimens of the feminine gender, and to some of these it occasionally falls to give our maid-of-all-work her first lessons in her multifarious occupations: the mistress's commands are the measure of the maid-of-all-work's duties. By the time she has become a tolerable servant, she is probably engaged ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... another, in this family or that, and when a formal occasion calls for writing, each takes leave to spell his baptismal name in his own way, without a passing thought that there may be a canonical form. Borrowings from other languages have added to the uncertainties of orthography and gender. Individuals sign indifferently, Denise, Denije or Deneije; Conrad or Courade; men bear such names as Hermenegilde, ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... seventh year, young Friedrich was taken out of the hands of the women; and had Tutors and Sub-Tutors of masculine gender, who had been nominated for him some time ago, actually set to work upon their function. These we have already heard of; they came from Stralsund Siege, all ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... Mr. Reilly, I couldn't make use of any other gender but the feminine without violating prosody; for although I'm not so sharp at my Latin as I was, still I couldn't use ignarus, as you see, without fairly committing myself as a scholar; and indeed, if I went to that, it would ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... of terminations is precisely what did happen before the Norman Conquest in those parts of England most overrun by the Danes. There, the adjectives lost their terminations to indicate gender and case, and the article "the" ceased ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... lonely Eden for their sake? 'Tis better that but two should find Gladness of heart and peace of mind, Than all the greater sum of life— With burning hearts that fates unbind And crowding thoughts that gender strife. But no, the gift of life is one Of strangest form, of blended tints And crossing lines, with mingled hints Of glory from an unseen sun; And shades that hourly darker grow For those who seek that sun to know;— And ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... suppositum completed with its final completion. Hence, since they placed two supposita in Christ, they said that God is two, in the neuter. But because they asserted one Person, they said that Christ is one, in the masculine, for the neuter gender signifies something unformed and imperfect, whereas the masculine signifies something formed and perfect. On the other hand, the Nestorians, who asserted two Persons in Christ, said that Christ is two not only in the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... the eldest, as I remind my brothers; and of the more worthy gender, which my sisters sometimes forget. Though we live in the village, my father is a gentleman, as I shall be when I am grown up. I have told the village boys so more than once. One feels mean in boasting that one is better born than they are; ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Her knowledge of horses, of harness, of farm subjects in general made good soil for conversation with her host, and her love for the motherless colt called her to the barn and made special openings for communications. Nathan called the colt, which was of the feminine gender, Pat, because its upper lip was so long, and that too the girl enjoyed, and entered into the joke by softening the name to Patsie. They were good friends. Having decided to befriend her, the man's interest in her ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... me with, and I have no copy here, but I shall be at home soon, when I will send it you. Apropos to being at home, Mrs. Burns threatens in a week or two to add one more to my paternal charge, which, if of the right gender, I intend shall be introduced to the world by the respectable designation of Alexander Cunningham Burns. My last was James Glencairn, so you can have no objection to the company ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... those who occupy themselves with Nature, seeing that she is a proud jade and a capricious one, and only allows herself to be seen at certain times. Do you understand? So in all languages does she belong to the feminine gender, being a thing essentially changeable and fruitful and ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... less worthy gender is degeneration of reason. What would they have said in the Senate-house, Janetta? However, I will obey your orders. What ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... addition she made hastily, seeing, I suppose, that I looked rather glum at the suggestion. Inwardly I consigned her friend to the devil, especially if of the masculine gender; outwardly I expressed my felicity at making the acquaintance of any person whom she should honour with her friendship. Whereat, to my discomfiture, she laughed enigmatically; a very soft laugh, low-pitched and musical, like the cooing ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... that mamma is a noun of the feminine gender and singular number; men is a noun masculine and plural; table is neuter ...
— A Week of Instruction and Amusement, • Mrs. Harley
... the use of French words, so that for son-in-law we find Gender, Ginder, corresponding to Fr. Legendre. Fitch, usually an animal nickname (Chapter XXIII), is occasionally for le fiz, the son, which also survives as Fitz. Goodson, from the personal name Good (Chapter ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... Wrinkles, coming long before their time, furrowed her face and neck; she was clothed so grotesquely in a worn-out goatskin that if it had not been for a dirty yellow petticoat, a distinctive mark of sex, Hulot would hardly have known the gender she belonged to; for the meshes of her long black hair were twisted up and hidden by a red worsted cap. The tatters of the little boy did not cover him, but ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... which makes us say that (to a woman) the word "bore" is in the masculine gender and objective case, object of our deepest detestation. Men are oftener bores than women, for two reasons: One is that they seldom stop to think that they could be a bore to anybody; and the second is that we women never let them see that we are being bored, for it is our aim in life ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... was the deliberate saddling of our ancient nightmare of Invasion, putting the postillion on her, and trotting her along the high-road with a winding horn to rouse old Panic. Panic we will, for the sake of convenience, assume to be of the feminine gender, and a spinster, though properly she should be classed with the large mixed race of mental and moral neuters which are the bulk of comfortable nations. She turned in her bed at first like the sluggard of the venerable hymnist: but once ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... schoolmaster believed Latin was a universal specific. He loved the language and knew all the flock of frisky little exceptions of gender and conjugation, even as a shepherd knows his sheep. He gave his pupils gentle doses of the Delectus, and watched with eager, almost menacing, eye, for the working of the charm. It is quite possible ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... blew his nose violently. "Truly—though used for either gender, by the context masculine," he responded gravely. "Ah," he added, leaning over Clarence, and scanning his work hastily, "Good, very good! And now, possibly," he continued, passing his hand like a damp sponge over his heated brow, ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... that of the South African languages generally- -a deficiency of syntax, of gender and case; a want of vigour in sound; a too great precision of expression, rendering it clumsy and unwieldy; and an absence of exceptions, which give beauty and variety to speech. The people have never invented ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... of Scython changing his sex, is perhaps based upon the fact, that the country of Thrace, which took the name of Thracia from a famous sorceress, was before called Scython; and that as it lost a name of the masculine gender for one of the feminine, in after times it became reported that ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... association had done. Henty sometimes called Nelson "Even." He said he thought the nickname was a good one; in the first place it meant a poetic summer evening; and in the second place it looked like the masculine gender for Eve. The night Henty enlarged on the probable derivation of his friend's name, Nelson laughed Mrs. Terry awake. It was the time of night when anything sounds funny to the one who cannot ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... the daughter of Rocks and Mountains; because it is a country abounding with rocks and stones. And the Greeks, really supposing Cepha, a rock or stone, to have been the young ladies father, added their sign of the masculine gender to it, and it became Cepha-us. And mount Cassius being its southern boundary was called Cassiobi; from its being also the boundary of the overflowed Nile, called Obi, which the Greeks {566} softened into Cassiopeia, and supposed ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 215, December 10, 1853 • Various
... a young odium and aversion to the very sight of men; ay, friend, she would ha' shrieked if she had but seen a man till she was in her teens. As I'm a person, 'tis true. She was never suffered to play with a male child, though but in coats. Nay, her very babies were of the feminine gender. Oh, she never looked a man in the face but her own father or the chaplain, and him we made a shift to put upon her for a woman, by the help of his long garments, and his sleek face, till she ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... a virtue, male or female—if virtues admit of grammatical distinctions, if virtues acknowledge the more worthy gender and the less worthy of the grammar, show me a virtue male or female that can long exist without truth. Even that emphatically termed the virtue of our sex, Helen, on which social happiness rests, society depends, on what is it based? is it not on that single-hearted virtue truth?—and ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... separation from each other—say five for the whole length of the boat—you behold tumblers arranged, with two forlorn radishes in each. The butter lies like gravy in the plate; the malodorous passengers of the masculine gender draw nigh to the scanty board; the captain comes near, to act his oft-repeated part, as President of the day. Oh, gracious! 'tis a scene of enormous cry and scanty wool. It mendicants description. . . . But the grand charm and scene of a canal packet is in the ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... soubrette, since last we met; And yet—ah, yet, how swift and tender My thoughts go back in time's dull track To you, sweet pink of female gender! I shall not say—though others may— That time all human joy enhances; But the same old thrill comes to me still With memories of ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... her own sex at least, do her justice; lay aside diabolical Envy, and its brother Malice [Footnote: This fair and elegant prefacer (sic) has resolved that Malice should be of the masculine gender: I believe it is both masculine and feminine, and I heartily wish it were neuter.] with all their accursed company, sly whispering, cruel back-biting, spiteful detraction, and the rest of that hideous crew, which, I hope, are very falsely said to attend ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... RATIO FEMINARUM, and of men whose natures are of the epicene gender. It is a luxury we must forego in the face of the stern duties which evil compels ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... authorities: Edgeucation, fraze, teadgeous, roughf, icecikles, natcheural, quallyfide, muskeline, femeline and nutur gender. ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 6, June, 1889 • Various
... King can do no wrong'' was carried to an extreme length when a schoolboy blunder of Louis XIV. was allowed to change the gender of a French noun. The King said "un carosse,'' and that is what it is now. In Cotgrave's Dictionary carosse appears as feminine, but Mnage notes it as having been changed ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... yet you see, she looks as fresh and sweet as when starting out, with the addition of much becoming trimming; and where she has gone heartily, yet with a girlish grace, the other has gone pell-mell, as though in defiance of any restriction on feminine gender. Do you know which ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... confused the gender in titles of respect, and from force of habit he continued to do so in addressing Tyler Sudley for many a year after ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... stret tracks for the table. And a mighty different table it was from that to which we had sat down on the preceding morning. Timothy—unscared by the wonder of the mountain nymphs, who deemed a being of the masculine gender as an intruder, scarce to be tolerated, on the mysteries of the culinary art—had exerted his whole skill, and brought forth all the contents of his canteen! We had a superb steak of the fattest venison, ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... protested Bernard modestly. "I'm not tall enough to please everyone of the feminine gender. But you think ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... the Indian tongue there is no distinction of masculine or feminine gender, but simply ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... been served with dinner. The "Waiting Group" was one of the most cheerful, lively, witty and jolly groups on the place. In fact it contained some of the most eminent persons in our midst, and at dinner the waiters were of the masculine gender solely. ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... Garrick speak the soliloquy last night?—Oh, against all rule, my lord,—most ungrammatically! betwixt the substantive and the adjective, which should agree together in number, case, and gender, he made a breach thus,—stopping, as if the point wanted settling;—and betwixt the nominative case, which your lordship knows should govern the verb, he suspended his voice in the epilogue a dozen times three seconds and ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... author's characters in. It is too often filled with traditional common-place conceptions of the part, handed down from sire to son, and suited to the taste of THE GREAT VULGAR AND THE SMALL.—''Tis an unweeded garden: things rank and gross do merely gender in it!' If a man of genius comes once in an age to clear away the rubbish, to make it fruitful and wholesome, they cry, "Tis a bad school: it may be like nature, it may be like Shakespeare, but it is not like ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... gender was ever more capable of presenting to the mind the elegaic nature of an old maid than Mademoiselle Sophie Gamard. In order to describe a being whose character gives a momentous interest to the petty events of the present drama and to the anterior ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... hither and thither, scarcely knowing what to do with ourselves. At length Ellen proposed that we should go to "the boys' room," and go we accordingly did. We would have recognized it as the sanctum of two or three noisy urchins of the male gender, even had we not known it beforehand. On the dressing-table stood a top, half-a-dozen marbles, and a fishing-line; while the walls displayed various quaint devices of their own drawing. There was a something which, Ellen informed us, was intended for a ghost; but if so, ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... childhood to be sympathetic, altruistic, devoted, self-sacrificing, and were thus much better prepared than the men for the germs of amorous sentiment, which can grow only in such a soil of self-denial. Hence it is that Hindoo love-poems are usually of the feminine gender. This is notably the case with the Saptacatakam of Hala, an anthology of seven hundred Prakrit verses made from a countless number of love-poems that are intended to be sung—"songs," says Albrecht Weber, "such ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... except against the sexe, and not allowe it for a male-broode, sithens as our Italians saie, Le parole sono femine, & i fatti sono maschy, Wordes they are women, and deeds they are men. But let such know that Detti and fatti, wordes and deeds with me are all of one gender. And although they were commonly Feminine, why might not I by strong imagination (which Phisicions give so much power unto) alter their sexe? Or at least by such heaven-pearcing devotion as transformed Iphis, according to that description of ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... had expected me she would have waited up in spite of the cold. I felt as if I were in the middle of an iceberg. I heard the girl laughing, and going up to the bed and passing my hand over it I came across some plain tokens of the masculine gender. I had got hold of her brother. In the meanwhile the mother had got a candle, and I saw the girl with the bedclothes up to her chin, for, like her brother, she was as naked as my hand. Although no ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Language—are, in the next place, distinguished by Gender, as that word itself is distinguished by Sex. By the principle of Overlapping, above explained, this distinction of Gender or Sex descends in a minor degree into the Thing World; in a large degree to the Animal World below man: in less degree ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... sienne, singuler; miennes, tiennes, siennes, plurell nombre and feminyn. But there ben certayne names of the femynyn, whiche do requyre the pronownes masculyns that must be excepted, as mon ame, mon hotesse, and suche lyke: where both ame and hotesse ben femynyn gender, and mon he (she) masculyn. And me, te, se, ben indifferent, as in these wordes: il, (elle) sayth to me, he (she) saith to the, he (she) saith to him; me dit, il (elle) te dit, il (elle) se dit; where me, ...
— An Introductorie for to Lerne to Read, To Pronounce, and to Speke French Trewly • Anonymous
... and ess, generally signify the person who, or thing which. The last is an affix denoting the feminine gender. ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey |
