Word.ws English Dictionary

degendering

degendering is the present participle and gerund of degender.

Meaning of degender

Verb (1)

degender (third-person singular simple present degenders, present participle degendering, simple past and past participle degendered)

  1. (intransitive, obsolete) To degenerate.
    • And if then thoſe may any vvorſe be red, / They into that ere long will be degendered.1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book V, Prologue”, in The Faerie Queene. […], part II (books IV–VI), London: […] [Richard Field] for William Ponsonby, →OCLC, stanza 2, page 184

Verb (2)

degender (third-person singular simple present degenders, present participle degendering, simple past and past participle degendered)

  1. (transitive) To strip of gender; to make genderless or gender-neutral.
    • It follows that a degendering strategy, an attempt to dismantle hegemonic masculinity, is unavoidable[…]2005, R. W. Connell, Masculinities, page 232
  2. (transitive) To refer to (someone) with terms that avoid mentioning their gender, such as calling a woman "they" or using "my partner" to refer to one's girlfriend.

Questions about degendering

What is degendering the present participle and gerund of?
Degendering is the present participle and gerund of degender.

Words near degendering in the dictionary

  1. degemination
  2. degeminations
  3. degen
  4. degender
  5. degendered
  6. degendering
  7. degenderisation
  8. degenderise
  9. degenderised
  10. degenderises
  11. degenderising

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: degendering (page history and authors); degender (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “degendering.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/degendering. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.