Word.ws English Dictionary

degener

degener is the alternative form 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.

Forms of degener

third-person singular presentdegeners
present participledegenering
past participledegenered
pastdegenered

Questions about degener

What is degener the alternative form of?
Degener is the alternative form of degender.

Words near degener in the dictionary

  1. degenderize
  2. degenderized
  3. degenderizes
  4. degenderizing
  5. degenders
  6. degener
  7. degeneracies
  8. degeneracy
  9. degeneralization
  10. degeneralizations
  11. degeneralize

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: degener (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: “degener.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/degener. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.