misgender

UK/mɪsˈd͡ʒɛndə//mɪsˈd͡ʒɛndɚ/

misgender verb: to refer to (someone) using terms that express the wrong gender, either unknowingly or intentionally.

Verb

misgender (third-person singular simple present misgenders, present participle misgendering, simple past and past participle misgendered)

(transitive) To refer to (someone) using terms that express the wrong gender, either unknowingly or intentionally.
- Misnamed (and misgendered) was Patricia Glass Schuman, of Neal-Schuman Publishers.1990, Library Journal, page 9
- Gendering is the process of classifying and identifying the gender of other people, quickly and usually unconsciously, based on just a few visual and/or audio clues. This process of gendering privileges cisgendered people as few cisgendered people have had the experience of being misgendered. The...2013, Kelby Harrison, “Introduction: Many Have Passed; Some Have Failed”, in Sexual Deceit: The Ethics of Passing, Lexington Books, →ISBN, page 12
(transitive) To use the wrong grammatical gender with a word.
- Leonie was always, in fact, the first to point out a misconjugated verb, a misgendered noun, […]2017, Rebecca Schuman, Schadenfreude, A Love Story
- Our first demonstration at the Canadian border—where we’d planned to test rumors about PWAs being denied entry into Canada by announcing we all had AIDS—fizzled when our bus entered the country without incident, save the late realization that our bilingual T-shirts had misgendered the virus—it's...2022, Ron Goldberg, “Storming the Ivory Tower”, in Boy with the Bullhorn: A Memoir and History of ACT UP New York, Fordham University Press, →ISBN

This process of gendering privileges cisgendered people as few cisgendered people have had the experience of being misgendered.2013, Kelby Harrison, “Introduction: Many Have Passed; Some Have Failed”, in Sexual Deceit: The Ethics of Passing, Lexington Books, →ISBN...
With a few notable exceptions[…]reports from the mainstream press willfully misgendered Manning while reporting this news.2013 August 22, Katie McDonough, “Media willfully misgender Chelsea Manning”, in Salon, archived from the original on 15 Jul 2013:
Occasionally, of course, we misgender people by accident.2016, Michele Angello, Ali Bowman, Raising the Transgender Child:
For instance, @she_not_he is “a bot politely correcting Twitter users who misgender Caitlyn Jenner.”2016 November, Douglas Guilbeault, Samuel Woolley, “How Twitter Bots Are Shaping the Election”, in The Atlantic:

third-person singular present	misgenders
present participle	misgendering
past participle	misgendered
past	misgendered

From mis- + gender, 1989.

What does misgender mean?: Misgender means to refer to (someone) using terms that express the wrong gender, either unknowingly or intentionally.
How do you use misgender in a sentence?: This process of gendering privileges cisgendered people as few cisgendered people have had the experience of being misgendered.
What part of speech is misgender?: Misgender is a verb.
How do you pronounce misgender?: Misgender is pronounced /mɪsˈd͡ʒɛndɚ/ (US).
What is the past tense of misgender?: The past tense of misgender is misgendered.

Adapted from Wiktionary: misgender (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Naomi Persephone Amethyst (NaomiAmethyst)-misgender.wav.

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