Emily Dickinson Lexicon

GEN'DER, n. [Fr. genre; Sp. genero; It. genere; from L. genus, from geno, gigno, Gr. γενναω, γινομαι, to beget, or to be born; Ir. geinim; W. geni, to be born; gan, a birth; cenaw, offspring; Gr. γενος, γονος; Eng. kind. From the same root, Gr. γυνη, a woman, a wife; Sans. gena, a wife, jani, a woman, and genaga, a father. We have begin from the same root. See Begin and Can.]

1. Properly, kind; son. [Obs.] Shak.
2. A sex, male or female. Hence,
3. In grammar, a difference in words to express distinction of sex; usually a difference of termination in nouns, adjectives and participles, to express the distinction of male and female. But although this was the original design of different terminations, yet in the progress of language, other words having no relation to one sex or the other, came to have genders assigned them by custom. Words expressing males are said to be of the masculine gender; those expressing females, of the feminine gender; and in some languages, words expressing things having no sex, are of the neuter or neither gender.