2. A CONCRETE NOUN is the name of the substance, and of the quality, action, or condition which inheres in the substance; as, The wise; a traveler; a friend; London; Cicero.

3. A COLLECTIVE NOUN is a name which, in the singular number, denotes more than one; as, An army, a company.

4. CORRELATIVE NOUNS are names of objects which are viewed as related to each other; as, King and subject; son and father. 5. PARTICIPIAL NOUNS are those which have the form of participles, but perform the office of nouns; as, Reading is instructive; the writing is legible. Reading and writing are abstract nouns.

6. DIMINUTIVE NOUNS are those which are derived from other nouns, and which express some diminution of the original meaning; as, Satchel from sack; duckling from duck. See § 423.

7. MATERIAL NOUNS are the names of materials, that is, of things which produce no idea of individuality, but only an aggregate notion; as, Water, loam, milk.

Other parts of speech, and even the letters of the alphabet, are treated as nouns when they are made the subject of a verb, or the object of a verb or preposition; as, "The learned testify;" "The hes and shes will all be there;" "In that sentence the critic struck out on and introduced of;" "Q is in that word preferable to au;" "Mind your p's and q's;" "Your if is a mighty peacemaker."

PROPER NOUNS in the plural number, or with an article prefixed, become common nouns; as, "The Howards;" "He is the Cicero of his age." The term proper is from being proper, that is, peculiar to the individual bearing the name.

COMMON NOUNS, with the definite article prefixed, sometimes become proper nouns; as, The metropolis, the park. The term common is from being common to every individual comprised in the class. The term appellative, from appellare, to call, is applied to common nouns, because they are the names by which classes of objects are called.

GENDERS OF NOUNS.

§ 245. GENDER is a grammatical distinction in nouns expressing the natural distinction of sex. The word gender is from the French genre and the Latin genus, and properly means kind. The MASCULINE GENDER denotes the male sex; as, A man, a boy.

The FEMININE GENDER denotes the female sex; as, A woman,

a girl.

The NEUTER GENDER denotes the absence of sex; as, A chair, a table.

Gender, in the English language, is expressed,

I. By DIFFERENCE OF TERMINATION.

This termination of ess has been borrowed from the French esse and ice, which they took from the Latin issa and ix: Abbatissa, Latin; abbasse, Old English; abbess, English. So, Actrix, actrice, actress. These terminations are all of Norman descent, unknown to the ancient Saxons. The original of this termination may be run up to the Greek feminine termination -1, -1σσа: проÓíris, Latin prophetissa, French prophetisse, Old English prophetesse, modern prophetess.

In donna there is the Spanish, in heroine the Greek, in landgravine the German, in signora the Italian, in Augusta the Latin form.

In some cases there is simply an addition to the masculine, as prophet, prophetess. In other cases there is a change of some letter or letters from the masculine, as porter, portress.

II. BY DISTINCT WORDS, namely, by those that have no etymological relation to each other.

§ 246. The names of males are masculine; the names of fe males, feminine; as, John, Mary.

The masculine and the feminine pronouns express the gender; as, "Call the witness-him who first gave his testimony;" "I asked the parent to restrain her child."

1. Some words have the same termination for both masculine and feminine. These are said to be of the common gender; as, Parent, guardian, cousin, student, botanist, witness, neighbor, servant, friend.

2. Some words are used only in the feminine; as, Laundress, seamstress, brunette, dowager, jointress, mantua-maker, milliner, shrew, virago, syren, amazon, vixen, spinster.

3. Some masculine words are, by extension, applied to the whole species; as, Man, to denote the human race, females as well as males. Some feminine words are, in like manner, used for the whole species; as, Goose, duck.

4. The words Infant, child, involve so little of the idea of intelligence and of personality in them, and the sex being so often unknown to the speaker, that they are not unfrequently used in the neuter gender; as, "The infant raised its loving hands to the cheek of its mother;" "the child clung to the neck of its mother."

5. The masculine term has the general meaning expressing both male and female, and is always employed when the office, occupation, or profession, and not the sex of the individual, is chiefly to be expressed. The feminine term is used in those

cases only when discriminations of sex are indispensably neces sary. This is illustrated by the following examples: If I say "The poets of the age are distinguished more by correctness of taste than by sublimity of conception," I clearly include in the term poet both male and female writers of poetry. If I say "She is the best poetess of the country," I assign her the superiority over those of her own sex. If I say "She is the best poet of the country," I pronounce her superior to all other writers of poetry, both male and female.

ENGLISH GENDER, PHILOSOPHIC.

§ 247. There are, strictly speaking, but two sexes; yet, for convenience, the neuter (neither of the two) is classed with the genders. In this distribution the English language follows the order of nature, and is philosophically correct. In the Greek, Latin, and Anglo-Saxon, the gender is determined by the termination. In the French, the Italian, the Portuguese, and the Hebrew, all nouns are either masculine or feminine.

As sex is a natural distinction, and as gender is a grammatical one, we find they do not exactly coincide with each other. Thus, gladius, a sword, is of the masculine gender in Latin; and hasta, a lance, is of the feminine gender. In German, weib, a woman, is neuter. Languages which form the genders of nouns on terminations are full of inconsistencies, laying down rules apparently for the purpose of nullifying them by numerous exceptions. As gender in the English language is founded on distinction of sex, all objects not male and female are, in history, in philosophy, in common conversation, spoken of as of the neuter gender.

ENGLISH GENDER, POETIC.

§ 248. In those languages which form the distinction of gender on terminations, inanimate objects are, in plain prose, spoken of as male or female simply upon grammatical grounds. The English language is more animated and poetic, inasmuch as it admits of more frequent personifications. Hence what in the French is prose, is in the English poetry. In animated discourse, in poetry and eloquence, objects are personified, and the masculine or feminine gender is attributed to them on the ground of some artificial association, as in the following examples: