Gender.
Synonym:
sex.
Sex is a distinction among living beings; it is also the characteristic by which most living beings are distinguished from inanimate things, which are of no sex; gender is a distinction in language partially corresponding to this distinction in nature; while there are but two sexes, there are in some languages, as in English and German, three genders. The French language has but two genders and makes the names of all inanimate objects either masculine or feminine; some languages are without the distinction of gender, and those that maintain it are often quite arbitrary in its application. We speak of the masculine or feminine gender, the male or female sex.