definition, and the term neuter is made somewhat less appropriate by the adoption of a third denomination before it.  Nor is there less absurdity in the phraseology with which Murray proposes to avoid the recognition of the common gender:  “Thus we may say, Parents is a noun of the masculine and feminine gender; Parent, if doubtful, is of the masculine or feminine gender; and Parent, if the gender is known by the construction, is of the gender so ascertained.”—­Gram., 8vo, p. 39.  According to this, we must have five genders, exclusive of that which is called common; namely, the masculine, the feminine, the neuter, the androgynal, and the doubtful.

OBS. 4.—­It is plain that many writers on grammar have had but a confused notion of what a gender really is.  Some of them, confounding gender with sex, deny that there are more than two genders, because there are only two sexes.  Others, under a like mistake, resort occasionally, (as in the foregoing instance,) to an androgynal, and also to a doubtful gender:  both of which are more objectionable than the common gender of the old grammarians; though this common “distinction with regard to sex,” is, in our language, confessedly, no distinction at all.  I assume, that there are in English the three genders, masculine, feminine, and neuter, and no more; and that every noun and every pronoun must needs be of some gender; consequently, of some one of these three.  A gender is, literally, a sort, a kind, a sex.  But genders, in grammar, are attributes of words, rather than of persons, or animals, or things; whereas sexes are attributes, not of words, but of living creatures.  He who understands this, will perceive that the absence of sex in some things, is as good a basis for a grammatical distinction, as the presence or the difference of it in others; nor can it be denied, that the neuter, according to my definition, is a gender, is a distinction “in regard to sex,” though it does not embrace either of the sexes.  There are therefore three genders, and only three.

OBS. 5.—­Generic names, even when construed as masculine or feminine, often virtually include both sexes; as, “Hast thou given the horse strength? hast thou clothed his neck with thunder?  Canst thou make him afraid as a grasshopper? the glory of his nostrils is terrible.”—­Job, xxxix, 19.  “Doth the hawk fly by thy wisdom, and stretch her wings toward the south?  Doth the eagle mount up at thy command, and make her nest on high?”—­Ib., ver. 26.  These were called, by the old grammarians, epicene nouns—­that is, supercommon; but they are to be parsed each according to the gender of the pronoun which is put for it.