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47 entries found.

"ingenuous, artless, natural," 1590s, from French naïf, literally "naive" (see naive). The masculine form of the French word, but used in English without reference to gender. As a noun, "natural, artless, naive person," first attested 1893, from French, where Old French naif also meant "native inhabitant; simpleton, natural fool."

heterogeneous (adj.)

"diverse in kind or nature," 1620s, from Medieval Latin heterogeneus, from Greek heterogenes, from heteros "different" (see hetero-) + genos "kind, gender, race stock" (from PIE root *gene- "give birth, beget," with derivatives referring to procreation and familial and tribal groups). Earlier in same sense was heterogeneal (c. 1600). Related: Heterogeneously; heterogeneousness.

yonder (adv.)

"within sight but not near," c. 1300, from Old English geond "throughout, up to, as far as" (see yond) + comparative suffix -er (2). Cognate with Middle Low German ginder, Middle Dutch gender, Dutch ginder, Gothic jaindre. Now replaced except in poetic usage by ungrammatical that.

tapster (n.)

"person employed to tap liquors," Old English tæppestre "female tavern-keeper, hostess at an inn, woman employed to tap liquors," fem of tæppere, from tæppa "tap" (see tap (n.1)) + fem. ending -ster. The distinction of gender in the word was lost by 15c., and by 1630s re-feminized tapstress is attested.

homogeneous (adj.)

1640s, from Medieval Latin homogeneus, from Greek homogenes "of the same kind," from homos "same" (see homo- (1)) + genos "kind, gender, race, stock" (from PIE root *gene- "give birth, beget," with derivatives referring to procreation and familial and tribal groups). Earlier in this sense was homogeneal (c. 1600). Related: Homogeneously; homogeneousness.

its (pron.)

neuter possessive pronoun; late 16c., from it + genitive/possessive ending 's (q.v.). "[A]t first commonly written it's, a spelling retained by some to the beginning of the 19c." [OED]. The apostrophe came to be omitted, perhaps because it's already was established as a contraction of it is, or by general habit of omitting apostrophes in personal pronouns (hers, yours, theirs, etc.).

The neuter genitive pronoun in Middle English was his, but the clash between grammatical gender and sexual gender, or else the application of the word to both human and non-human subjects, evidently made users uncomfortable. Restriction of his to the masculine and avoidance of it as a neuter pronoun is evidenced in Middle English, and of it and thereof (as in KJV) were used for the neuter possessive. In literary use, his as a neuter pronoun continued into the 17c. In Middle English, simple it sometimes was used as a neuter possessive pronoun (c. 1300).

epicene (adj.)

"belonging to or including both sexes," mid-15c., epycen, originally a grammatical term for nouns that may denote either gender, from Latin epicoenus "common," from Greek epikoinos "common to many, promiscuous," from epi "on" (see epi-) + koinos "common" (see coeno-). English has no need of it in its grammatical sense. Extended sense of "characteristic of both sexes" first recorded in English c. 1600; that of "effeminate" is from 1630s.

themselves (pron.)

mid-15c. in northern dialect, standard from 1540s, alteration of Middle English tham-self, emphatic plural pronoun, also reciprocal pronoun (14c.); see them + self, with self, originally an inflected adjective, treated as a noun with a meaning "person" and pluralized. Displacing Old English heom selfum (dative). Themself returned late 20c. as some writers took to replacing himself with gender-neutral everyone, anyone, etc.

sloven (n.)

late 15c., "immoral woman," later (16c.) also "rascal, knave" (regardless of gender); probably from a continental Germanic source, compare Middle Flemish sloovin "a scold," sloef "untidy, shabby," Dutch slof "careless, negligent," Middle Low German sloven "put on clothes carelessly," from Proto-Germanic *slaubjan, from PIE root *sleubh- "to slide, slip." Meaning "person careless of dress or negligent of cleanliness" is from 1520s. Also see slut.

accidence (n.)

late 14c., in philosophy, "non-essential or incidental characteristic," also "part of grammar dealing with inflection" (mid-15c.), in some cases a misspelling of accidents, or else directly from Latin accidentia (used as a term in grammar by Quintilian), neuter plural of accidens, present participle of accidere "to happen, fall out; fall upon" (see accident). The grammar sense is because they are qualities which change in accordance with use (as gender, number, tense, case) but are not essential to the primary signification.

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