Some languages mark words according to whether they are masculine, feminine or neuter. In English, we do not commonly mark nouns according to gender.
However, we use pronouns and possessive determiners to show gender (for example,he, she, it, his, hers):
She’s sellingherhouse.
Some nouns which refer to living things can be marked for gender (e.g.actress,heroine). Some people may consider such words to be dated.
More commonly, words such asactorare used to refer to both male and female. Some nouns which used to end in -manare now neutral and are used to include both genders:
chair(preferred tochairman)
flight attendant(preferred tostewardandstewardess)
spokesperson(preferred tospokesman)
The titleMsis preferred toMrs(married woman) orMiss(unmarried woman) so that we cannot tell whether the woman is married or not.
We give some animals male and female words:
tiger–tigress
dog–bitch
We can use the pronounitto refer to very small children and babies when we speak generally about them, or when we do not know their gender. We also useitto refer to animals when they’re not pets or when we don’t know them personally:
The baby in the flat next door is always awake anditjust never seems to stop crying.
See also:
Nouns and gender
Sexist language