agender
English
Etymology
c. 2000s, from a- (“not”) + gender.
Pronunciation
Adjective
agender (not comparable)
- Without an associated gender (in any sense); not having a particular gender.
- An agender noun includes both the masculine and feminine forms.
- 2000 November 21, abbycat2 [username], “Re: God and Grammar”, in soc.religion.quaker[2] (Usenet):
- "He" has been used as the default pronoun, and as I said, unfortunately there is no agender equivalent to he/she, as "it" is usually equated with something without life, or at least of a life form considered to be less intelligent (that in itself is negotiable, but this is for a different topic).
- 2019 May 29, Amy Harmon, “Which Box Do You Check? Some States Are Offering a Nonbinary Option”, in The New York Times[4], archived from the original on 8 June 2019:
- There are faculty advisers on El’s theater crew who balk at using “they” for one person; classmates at El’s public school on the outskirts of Boston who insist El can’t be “multiple people”; and commenters on El’s social media feeds who dismiss nonbinary gender identities like androgyne (a combination of masculine and feminine), agender (the absence of gender) and gender-fluid (moving between genders) as lacking a basis in biology.
- [2020 April 6, Dan Shive, El Goonish Shive (webcomic), Comic for Monday, Apr 6, 2020:
- "'Agender'? I'm pretty sure that means not identifying as a particular gender? I'm sorry. That's just what it made me think of. I'm not trying to tell you what to--"]
- For more quotations using this term, see Citations:agender.
Synonyms
- See genderless
Hypernyms
Related terms
Translations
having no gender
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See also
Further reading
- “agender”, in Collins English Dictionary.
- “agender, adj.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
- “agender”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
- “agender”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.