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8. A few nouns are automatically replaced by masculine or feminine pronouns, or by it. Some of these are as follows:
9. 1) Contrasting nouns describing people (replaceable by e.g. 'he/she')
10. bachelor/spinster, boy/girl, brother/sister, father/mother, gentleman/lady, grandfather/grandmother, grandson/granddaughter, husband/wife, king/queen, man/woman, monk/nun, Mr/Mrs, nephew/niece, sir/madam, son/daughter, uncle/aunt;
11. 2) Contrasting nouns describing animals (normally replaceable by 'it')
12. bull/cow, cock (or rooster)/hen, dog/bitch, gander/goose, pig (boar)/sow, ram/ewe, stallion/mare, drake/duck, drone/bee;
13. 3) '-ess' endings and other forms indicating sex/gender
14. A common way of indicating sex or gender is to change the ending of the masculine noun with the suffix –ess: actor/actress, god/goddesss, heir/heiress, host/hostess, prince/princess, steward/stewardess, waiter/waitress. This distinction is becoming rarer so that words like author, instructor and manager are now commonly used for both sexes. Some words, such as poetess, are falling into disuse because they are considered disparaging by both sexes. In a few cases, -ess endings are used for female animals, e.g. leopard/leopardess, lion/lioness, tiger/tigress. Or he-/she- (stressed) is used as a prefix in e.g. he-goat/she-goat, or wolf/she-wolf
15. Similar references can be made with other endings, etc. as well: bridegroom/bride hero/heroine, lad/lass, landlord/landlady, male/female, masseur/masseuse, usher/usherette, widower/widow
16. 4) Identifying masculine and feminine by 'man', 'woman', etc.
17. Certain nouns ending in -man refer to males: e.g. dustman, policeman postman, salesman. Others, ending in -woman, refer to women: e.g. policewoman, postwoman, saleswoman. A few, such as chairman can be used for men and women.
18. We tend to assume that words like model and nurse refer to women and words like judge and wrestler refer to men. If this is not the case and we wish to make a point of it, we can refer to a male model or a male nurse, or to a woman judge or a woman wrestler.
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| Agreement between subject and predicate (concord). | | | Identifying masculine or feminine through pronouns |