Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Masculine |
MasculineAdjective1. Of grammatical gender. 2. Associated with men and not with women. 3. (music or poetry) ending on an accented beat or syllable; "a masculine cadence"; "the masculine rhyme of `annoy, enjoy'". Noun1. A gender that refers chiefly (but not exclusively) to males or to objects classified as male. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "masculine" was first used: sometime around 1350. (references) |
Etymology: Masculine \Mas"cu*line\, adjective. [Latin expression masculinus, from masculus male, manly, diminutive of mas male: compare to the French expression masculin. See Male masculine.]. (references) |
| Domain | Definition |
19th Century Satire | From Grk. maskos, girl, and eukolos, easy. Easy for the girls. Source: Foolish Dictionary, 1904. |
Multilingual Slang | English (butch). (references) |
Slang | Butch. (references) |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
The gender-specific pronouns of a language distinguish between male and female people (and often of animals as well). The English language has eight third person singular personal pronouns: he, she, him, her, his, hers, himself and herself. The other English pronouns do not make this distinction, i.e., they are "ungendered", although all eight pronouns have been also used in a gender-neutral sense: see "generic usage" below.This meaning of gender to mean gender role or sex should not be confused with the grammatical gender of other languages such as French and Spanish, which assign gender to nouns such as la maison or le crayon. Other languages have genders that are not analogous to sex, such as "animate" and "inanimate" in Ojibway. (see grammatical gender).
They decline as follows:
Subject Object Possessive Adjective Possessive Pronoun Reflexive Male He laughed I hit him His face bled I am his He shaves himself Female She laughed I hit her Her face bled I am hers She shaves herself
Ships and Countries
Traditionally ships have been referred to using the feminine pronouns (even ships named after men, such as the USS Abraham Lincoln), as well as countries and oceans. The origins of this practice are not certain, and it is currently in decline (though more common for ships, particularly in nautical usage, than for countries).
In March 2002, the British newspaper Lloyds List announced that it would start referring to all vessels as 'it', but subsequently reversed its decision after receiving letters of protest.
See also:
Generic Usage
Usage of him and his to refer to a generic member of a mixed sex group was prescribed by manuals of style and school textbooks from the early 19th century until around the 1960s. It was called 'generic' or 'universal'
Gender-specific pronouns are also sometimes used when most members of some group are the same gender, with a small number of members of the opposite gender.
- The customer brought his purchases to the cashier for checkout.
- In a supermarket, everyone can buy anything he needs.
- When a customer argues, always agree with him.
Compare the word man when used refer to humans in general.
- A secretary should keep her temper in check.
- A boss should respect and listen to his employees.
- Every hairdresser has her own style.
- A junior doctor is at the bottom of his profession.
- All men are created equal.
- That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.
- Man cannot live by bread alone.
Generic use and Non-sexist language
Some people feel that this can cause a variety of problems. In particular, many feminists feel that the male pronouns imply a masculine referent, which they argue would tend to exclude women unfairly (see sexism).
Recently, some people also use female pronouns in a generic sense, to draw attention to feminist issues. Some authors recommend alternating between the use of the generic male and the generic female, perhaps on a per-chapter basis.
Some people use compound forms to emphasize the possibility of the referent having either sex: such as he or she, him or her, his or her or himself or herself. Any of these forms could be reversed, so as not to imply that males had priority: she or he, her or him, her or his or herself or himself. There are also abbreviated forms, such as s/he and him/herself, but most language commentators dismiss them as unpronounceable for everyday speech. However, these and neologisms such as "hir", "sie" and their variants are used at times.
Government Usage
It is not unheard of for governments, clubs and other groups to reinterpret sentences like 'every member must take off his shoes before entering the chapel' to mean that therefore female members may not enter the chapel. Indeed, the Persons Case, the legal battle over whether or not Canadian women counted as legal persons eligible to sit in the Senate, partially turned on such a point.
In 1984 the Minnesota State Legislature ordered that all gender-specific language be removed from the state laws. After two years of work, the rewritten laws were adopted. Only 301 of 20,000 pronouns were feminine. "His" was changed 10,000 times and "he" was changed 6,000 times.
By contrast, the Constitution of Ireland, describes the President of Ireland throughout as 'he', yet the two most recent presidents were women; in 1997, four of the five candidates in the election were women. Efforts in a court case to argue that 'he' excluded women were dismissed by the Irish Supreme Court, which ruled the term 'gender-neutral'.
See also:
- singular they
- gender-neutral pronoun
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Gender-specific pronoun."
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Male is a sex that denotes an animal which produces sperm cells in order to reproduce. (The sperm is defined as the smaller gamete). The male is one half of a heterogamous reproduction system, where the female is the other half.'Male' and 'female' designate reproductive structures in plants, so the concept is not just limited to animals.
Male or Masculine is a grammatical gender in many languages.
A man is a male human being.
In most cultures, men are expected to conform to a standard male gender role.
In hardware and electronics, a male connector is a fixture, such as a plug, which is designed to be inserted into a corresponding (female) fitting. (See gender changer.)
See also:
- Misandry
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Male."
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
The word masculine can refer to:
- the property of being biologically male
- masculinity, a traditionally male gender role
- the masculine grammatical gender
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Masculine."
| The following table is compiled from various sources, across various languages. When English abbreviations or acronyms come from a non-English source, this is noted. | |||
| Entry | Source | Expression | Field |
| mas. | English | Masculine | Language |
Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |||
| Antonyms: feminine (adj), neuter (adj). (additional references) |
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Man | Adjective: male, he-, masculine; manly, virile; unwomanly, unfeminine. |
Strength | Manly, man-like, manful; masculine, male, virile. |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
Crosswords: Masculine |
| English words defined with "masculine": Amazonian, Archwife ♦ Common gender ♦ dike, dyke ♦ Heterogeneous nouns, Himself ♦ It ♦ macho, mama's boy, mamma's boy, mother's boy ♦ neuter. (references) |
| Specialty definitions using "masculine": Article omitted ♦ bull dyke, bulldyke, butch, Buzfuz ♦ CREDULITY, Curiosity ♦ Diesel Dyke ♦ His, HORSE GODMOTHER ♦ JACK WHORE ♦ Moll Cutpurse ♦ Omphale, One's ♦ Sex Characteristics, SWEET HEART ♦ Virilism. (references) |
| Etymologies containing "masculine": Mulatto. (references) |
| Domain | Usage | |
Screenplays | I don't need masculine protection (Oliver's Travels; writing credit: Alan Plater) And I hope their first child be a masculine child (The Godfather; writing credit: Francis Ford Coppola; Mario Puzo) | |
Movie/TV Titles | The Eternal Masculine (1912) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title | ||
Books |
| ||
Music |
| ||
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| Author | Quotation |
Amos Bronson Alcott | Debate is masculine, conversation is feminine. |
Frank Muir | Wit is a weapon. Jokes are a masculine way of inflicting superiority. But humor is the pursuit of a gentle grin, usually in solitude. |
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow | Like a French poem is life; being only perfect in structure when with the masculine rhymes mingled the feminine are. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | |
| Title | Author | Quote |
Les Miserables | Hugo, Victor | She was a masculine lackadaisicalness |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Health | The hormone increases strength and brings on a more muscular, masculine appearance. (references) | |
Vasectomy does not affect production or release of testosterone, the male hormone responsible for a man's sex drive, beard, deep voice, and other masculine traits. (references) | ||
In addition to these physical changes, testosterone injections often bring on psychological changes as well. As they begin to develop a more masculine appearance, the self-confidence of XXY males tends to increase. (references) | ||
Women | Yemen | The NWC's 7-member legal committee, consisting of lawyers, women's rights experts, and Islamic scholars, found that 10 laws contained discriminatory language or "negligence with respect to women" and that 15 others were ambiguous because the laws used the masculine impersonal pronoun when the statutes governed women as well as men. (references) |
Lexicography | Devil's Dictionary | CURIOSITY, n. An objectionable quality of the female mind. The desire to know whether or not a woman is cursed with curiosity is one of the most active and insatiable passions of the masculine soul. |
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| "Masculine" is generally used as an adjective (general or positive) -- approximately 99.69% of the time. "Masculine" is used about 646 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Adjective (general or positive) | 99.69% | 644 | 10,128 |
| Noun (singular) | 0.31% | 2 | 245,945 |
| Total | 100.00% | 646 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
| The following table summarizes names derived from the word "masculine". | |||
| Name | Gender | Language | Meaning |
| Tryphon | N/A | Biblical | Masculine of Tryphena |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references.
| |||
Expressions using "masculine": become masculine ♦ becoming masculine ♦ in the masculine gender ♦ make more masculine ♦ making more masculine ♦ masculine gender ♦ masculine noun ♦ masculine rhyme. Additional references. | |
| Hyphenated Usage | |
Beginning with "masculine": masculine-dominated, masculine-feminine, masculine-looking, masculine-minded, masculine-seeming, masculine-sounding. | |
Ending with "masculine": all-masculine, not-masculine, presented-it-masculine. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Language | Translations for "masculine"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Afrikaans | manlik (male). (various references) | |
Albanian | mashkullor (male, manly, phallic). (various references) | |
Arabic | مسترجلة (mannish), مذكر (male, reminiscent), ذكر (admonish, citation, invoke, mate, mention, recall, recollect, remember, remind, rod, son), رجولي (male, manly, virile). (various references) | |
Bulgarian | като на мъж, като мъж (manlike), от мъжки род, мъжки род, мъжки пол, мъжки (bull, he, male, man, man-sized, virile), мъжествен (male, manful, manly, virile), дума от мъжки род. (various references) | |
Chinese | "性 (male, male-), "子氣 (manly). (various references) | |
Czech | mužský rod, mužský (male, virile). (various references) | |
Danish | mandlig (male). (various references) | |
Dutch | mannelijk (male). (various references) | |
Esperanto | vira (male). (various references) | |
Farsi | مذکر (Male), مردانه (Male, Manly, Mannish, Virile), نرینه (Male), نرین (Male), نر (Bull, Husband), گشن (Male). (various references) | |
Finnish | miespuolinen (male), miesmäinen (manly, mannish), miehinen (male), miehekäs (manly), maskuliini. (various references) | |
French | masculin (male, manly, mannish). (various references) | |
German | männlich (male, manly, mannish, unfeminine, virile, virilly), maskulinum (masculine noun). (various references) | |
Greek | άρρην, αρρενωπόσ (full-blooded, manlike), αρσενικόσ (male), ανδρικόσ (manful, manly, mannish, virile). (various references) | |
Hebrew | זכרי (male, manly), זכר (male, masculine gender, remember, tup), 'ברי (male, manlike, manly, virile). (various references) | |
Hungarian | férfias (ballsy, manful, manlike, manly, mannish, virile). (various references) | |
Indonesian | laki-laki (male), jantan (macho, male, manly). (various references) | |
Italian | maschio (boy, bull, Jack, male, man, manful, manly, son), maschile (boy's, male, manly, men's, unfeminine, viril). (various references) | |
Japanese Kanji | マシン油 (barowner, machine oil, magic, magic glass, magic hand, magic ink marker, magic mirror, magic number, Magic Tape, magical, magician, majolica, Majorca, majority, manager, manipulator, mascara, mascot, mask, masker, masking, mass, mass communication, mass consumption, mass democracy, mass fashion, mass game, mass media, mass production, mass sales, mass screening, Masscomp, mast, master, master course, master file, master key, master plan, master tape, masterpiece, Masters Golf Tournament, masturbation, mazurka, muscat, mustard, proprietor, serious, to jerk off, to masturbate). (various references) | |
Japanese Katakana | マスキュリン . (various references) | |
Korean | 남성. (various references) | |
Manx | firrynagh (he, male), firryn (he, mannish, virile). (various references) | |
Pig Latin | asculinemay.(various references) | |
Polish | męski (male). (various references) | |
Portuguese | varonil (malaria, manful, manlike, manly, virile), masculino (malaria, male). (various references) | |
Romanian | masculin (male, virile), viril (manful, manly, virile), lipsitã de feminitate, de bãrbat (manful, manlike, manly, mannish), bãrbãtesc (brave, male, manful, manlike, manly, mannish, man's, resolute, virile). (various references) | |
Russian | мужской (male, manlike, mens, virile). (various references) | |
Scottish | fireann. (various references) | |
Serbo-Croatian | muškog roda, muški (male, manful, manfully, manly, mannish, virile). (various references) | |
Spanish | varonil (male, manlike, manly, mannish, unfeminine, viril). (various references) | |
Swedish | maskulin (male, manly), manlig (male, manful, manlike, manly, mannish, virile). (various references) | |
Tagalog | laláki (fellow, male, man). (various references) | |
Thai | เกี่ยวกับเพศชาย, ผู้ชาย (bloke, geezer, man). (various references) | |
Turkish | erkeksi (mannish, mannishly, tomboyish, virile), erkek gibi (bull, hoydenish, manlike, mannish, mannishly, tomboyish), erkek (boy, fellow, gent, he, he-, Jack, male, man, Tom), erkeğe ait, eril (he). (various references) | |
Ukrainian | чоловічий рід, чоловічий (male, manlike, virile), чоловік (consort, he, him, husband, male, man, mate, spouse), мужній (courageous, high-hearted, manful, manly, soldierly, sportsmanlike). (various references) | |
Vietnamese | từ giống đực, con trai (boy, male), con đực (male). (various references) | |
Welsh | gwrywol, gwrywaidd. (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
| Language | Period | Translations |
| Latin | 500 BCE-Modern | m, mare, marem, mares, mari, maria, maribus, maris, masc., masculinas, masculini, masculino, masculinum, masculinus, masculus, maseas, masman, masmana. (various references) |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "masculine": masculinely, masculines. (additional references) | |
Words ending with "masculine": hypermasculine, supermasculine, ultramasculine, unmasculine. (additional references) | |
| |
"Masculine" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: Asciline, Macglone, Macibini, Maculinea, mascuilne, masculin, masculines, masculinism, Massimino, mesclun, Pascaline, Sacculina. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "masculine" (pronounced ma"skyulun) |
| 5 | -y u l u n | globulin. |
| 4 | -u l u n | adrenaline, insulin, javelin, lanolin, Magdalen, porcelain, Zeppelin. |
| 3 | -l u n | fallen, felon, Alan, Ballon, befallen, Billon, bouillon, Callan, Chamberlain, chaplain, colon, crestfallen, discipline, elan, gallon, gremlin, kaolin, Kremlin, Marlin, melon, Mullen, muskmelon, muslin, pelon, penicillin, pentathlon, phenolphthalein, pollen, solan, Solon, stolen, stollen, sullen, swollen, talon, Tolan, triathlon, vanillin, villain, watermelon, woolen, woollen. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
Direct Anagrams: calumnies. | |
| Words within the letters "a-c-e-i-l-m-n-s-u" | |
-1 letter: alumines, lunacies, melanics, meniscal, musicale. | |
-2 letters: acumens, almuces, alumine, alumins, amnesic, caesium, cauline, censual, cinemas, inlaces, inulase, lacunes, launces, leucins, macules, malices, malines, melanic, menials, mesclun, musical, sanicle, scaleni, seminal, uncials, unlaces. | |
-3 letters: acinus, aculei, acumen, aecium, aliens, alines, almuce, alumin, alumni, amices, amicus, amines, anemic, animes, animus, camels, camise, casein, caules, caulis. | |
| Words containing the letters "a-c-e-i-l-m-n-s-u" | |
+1 letter: culminates, luminances, masculines. | |
+2 letters: animalcules, calumniates, glucosamine, lawrenciums, masculinely, masculinise, masculinize, unmasculine. | |
+3 letters: communalizes, curtailments, emasculating, emasculation, glucosamines, illuminances, inconsumable, masculinised, masculinises, masculinized, masculinizes, mendaciously. | |
+4 letters: alphanumerics, ceruloplasmin, communalities, conceptualism, counterclaims, documentalist, ecumenicalism, emasculations, maliciousness, masculinities, mercurialness, miscellaneous, multichannels, multivalences, municipalizes, nonnumericals, nucleoplasmic, republicanism, supercriminal, unsymmetrical, vernacularism. | |
+5 letters: ceruloplasmins, conceptualisms, cumulativeness, documentalists, ecumenicalisms, emulsification, hypermasculine, magniloquences, metalinguistic, miraculousness, municipalities, neurochemicals, republicanisms, semifunctional, supercriminals, supermasculine, ultramasculine, vermiculations, vernacularisms. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Crosswords 3. Usage: Modern 4. Usage: Commercial | 5. Images: Slideshow 6. Quotations: Familiar 7. Quotations: Fiction 8. Quotations: Non-fiction | 9. Usage Frequency 10. Names: Derived from 11. Expressions 12. Expressions: Internet | 13. Translations: Modern 14. Translations: Ancient 15. Abbreviations 16. Acronyms | 17. Derivations 18. Rhymes 19. Anagrams 20. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
