gender
n. C / Un. the social and cultural roles that people use to identify as male, female, or another identity. It is different from biological sex because it focuses on how people feel and act in society.
n. the range of characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between, femininity and masculinity. In a sociological context, it refers to social and cultural identities rather than biological sex; in linguistics, it refers to the classification of nouns into categories that affect grammatical agreement.
The form asks for your name, age, and gender.
Sociologists study how gender roles have changed over the last century in response to economic shifts.
While biological sex is determined by physiological traits, gender is increasingly understood as a performative identity shaped by cultural expectations and individual self-perception.
From Middle English gendre, borrowed from Old French gendre, borrowed from Latin genere (“type, kind”). Doublet of genre and genus. The verb developed after the noun.
From Middle English gendren, genderen, from Middle French gendrer, from Latin generāre.
Borrowed from Indonesian gender, from Javanese ꦒꦼꦤ꧀ꦢꦺꦂ (gendèr), from Old Javanese gĕnder.
Uncountable when referring to the general concept or social category; countable when referring to specific identities or grammatical classifications.
What is your sex?What is your gender?In modern social contexts, 'gender' is the preferred term for identity, whereas 'sex' is reserved for biological or medical data.