tinguish sex (or the sex is
distinguished by the context) or else they do not distinguish sex.

If such words as _parent_, _servant_, _teacher_, _ruler_, _relative_,
_cousin_, _domestic_, etc., do not show the sex to which the persons
belong, they are neuter words.

26. Put in convenient form, the division of words according to sex,
or the lack of it, is,--

(MASCULINE: Male beings.
Gender nouns {
(FEMININE: Female beings.

Neuter nouns: Names of inanimate things, or of living beings whose
sex cannot be determined.

27. The inflections for gender belong, of course, only to masculine
and feminine nouns. _Forms_ would be a more accurate word than
_inflections_, since inflection applies only to the _case_ of nouns.

There are three ways to distinguish the genders:--

(1) By prefixing a gender word to another word.

(2) By adding a suffix, generally to a masculine word.

(3) By using a different word for each gender.

I. Gender shown by Prefixes.

[Sidenote: _Very few of class I._]

28. Usually the gender words _he_ and _she_ are prefixed to neuter
words; as _he-goat_--_she-goat_, _cock sparrow_--_hen sparrow_,
_he-bear_--_she-bear_.

One feminine, _woman_, puts a prefix before the masculine _man_.
_Woman_ is a short way of writing _wifeman_.

II. Gender shown by Suffixes.

29. By far the largest number of gender words are those marked by
suffixes. In this particular the native endings have been largely
supplanted by foreign suffixes.

[Sidenote: _Native suffixes._]

The native suffixes to indicate the feminine were _-en_ and _-ster_.
These remain in _vixen_ and _spinster_, though both words have lost
their original meanings.

The word _vixen_ was once used as the feminine of _fox_ by the
Southern-English. For _fox_ they said _vox_; for _from_ they said
_vram_; and for the older word _fat_ they said _vat_, as in _wine
vat_. Hence _vixen_ is for _fyxen_, from the masculine _fox_.

_Spinster_ is a relic of a large class of words that existed in Old
and Middle English,[1] but have now lost their original force as
feminines. The old masculine answering to _spinster_ was _spinner_;
but _spinster_ has now no connection with it.

The foreign suffixes are of two kinds:--

[Sidenote: _Foreign suffixes. Unaltered and little used._]

(1) Those belonging to borrowed words, as _czarina_, _senorita_,
_executrix_, _donna_. These are attached to foreign words, and are
n