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M is the first letter of most gendered titles, both masculine and feminine. The title "M" simply removes the following letters that would designate gender. [9] Misc stands for miscellaneous. [10] Mre is short for the word "mystery". [9] Msr is a combination of "Miss", a feminine title, and "Sir", which is typically masculine. [9]
For example, the words policeman [3] [4] and stewardess [5] [6] are gender-specific job titles; the corresponding gender-neutral terms are police officer [7] [8] and flight attendant. [9] [10] Other gender-specific terms, such as actor and actress, may be replaced by the originally male term; for example, actor used regardless of gender.
A gender-specific job title is a name of a job that also specifies or implies the gender of the person performing that job. For example, in English, the job titles stewardess and seamstress imply that the person is female, whilst the corresponding job titles steward and seamster imply that the person is male.
For example, the German word See meaning "lake" is masculine, whereas the identical word meaning "sea" is feminine. The meanings of the Norwegian noun ting have diverged further: masculine en ting is "a thing", whereas neuter et ting is "an assembly".
Gender-neutral language is language that avoids assumptions about the social gender or biological sex of people referred to in speech or writing. In contrast to most other Indo-European languages, English does not retain grammatical gender and most of its nouns, adjectives and pronouns are therefore not gender-specific.
Do not use gender-neutral speech when it gives undue emphasis to tiny minorities. If writing about nuns, it is appropriate to use feminine language, even though there may be a nun who is also transgender. Similarly, when writing about male pregnancy, it is appropriate to use masculine language, even though most pregnancies occur in females. Use ...
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Apart from pronouns, gender can be marked in personal names and certain titles. [27] Many words in modern English refer specifically to people or animals of a particular sex. [28] An example of an English word that has retained gender-specific spellings is the noun-form of blond/blonde, with the former being masculine and the latter being ...