engendering
engendering is the present participle and gerund of engender.
Meaning of engender
Verb (1)
engender (third-person singular simple present engenders, present participle engendering, simple past and past participle engendered)
- To beget (of a man); to bear or conceive (of a woman).
- O Error ſoone conceyu’d,
Thou neuer com’ſt vnto a happy byrth,
But kil’ſt the Mother that engendred thee.1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
- Synonyms:
- father, give birth, mother, sire
- O Error ſoone conceyu’d,
- To give existence to, to produce (living creatures).
- Like all interesting literary figures, he is full of tacit as well as of uttered reference to the conditions that engendered him[…].1891, Henry James, “James Russell Lowell”, in Essays in London and Elsewhere, page 60
- To bring into existence (a situation, quality, result etc.); to give rise to, cause, create.
- ME thinkes vertue is another manner of thing, and much more noble than the inclinations vnto goodneſſe, which in vs are ingendered.1603, Michel de Montaigne, “Of Crueltie”, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC, page 243
- To assume form; to come into existence; to be caused or produced.
- Thick Clouds are ſpread, and Storms engender there,
And Thunders Voice, which wretched Mortals fear,
And Winds that on their Wings, cold Winter bear.a. 1700, “Ovid’s Metamorphoses”, in John Dryden, transl., Poems on Various Occasions; and Translations from Several Authors, London: Jacob Tonson, published 1701, book I, page 147
- Synonyms:
- materialize, take form, appear, arise, be born, become, rise, come into being, emerge, form
- Thick Clouds are ſpread, and Storms engender there,
- To copulate, to have sex.
- But that the bodies of the Reprobate, who make the Kingdome of Satan, ſhall alſo be glorious, or ſpirituall bodies, or that they ſhall bee as the Angels of God, neither eating, nor, drinking, nor engendering[…], there is no place of Scripture to prove it[…]1651, Thomas Hobbes, “Of the Kingdome of Darknesse”, in Leviathan, Or The Matter Forme, & Power of a Common-Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civill, London: Andrew Crooke, page 343
Verb (2)
engender (third-person singular simple present engenders, present participle engendering, simple past and past participle engendered)
- To endow with gender; to create gender or enhance the importance of gender.
- Gender, they emphasize, is socially constructed by our surroundings. We are en-gendered by our families, our teachers, and by the images in our music, films, media and fashions.1981 April 11, Group Material Collective Changing Arttistic Definitions, “Philip Shehadi”, in Gay Community News, page 6
Noun
engendering (plural engenderings)
- The act by which something is engendered.
- On the one hand, it contains three implied narratives of each of the three divine engenderings.1977, Harold Bloom, Wallace Stevens: The Poems of Our Climate
Forms of engendering
| plural | engenderings |
|---|
Questions about engendering
- What does engendering mean?
- Engendering means the act by which something is engendered.
- What is engendering the present participle and gerund of?
- Engendering is the present participle and gerund of engender.
- What part of speech is engendering?
- Engendering is a noun.
- What is the plural of engendering?
- The plural of engendering is engenderings.
Words near engendering in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: engendering (page history and authors); engender (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: “engendering.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/engendering. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.