engender

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English[edit]

WOTD – 25 February 2010

Pronunciation[edit]

  • (UK) IPA(key): /ɪnˈdʒɛn.də/, /ɛnˈdʒɛn.də/
  • (US) IPA(key): /ɛnˈd͡ʒɛn.dɚ/, /ɪnˈd͡ʒɛn.dɚ/
  • Rhymes: -ɛndə(ɹ)
  • Audio (US)(file)
  • Audio (AU)(file)

Etymology 1[edit]

From Middle French engendrer, from Latin ingenerāre, from in- + generāre (“to generate”).

Alternative forms[edit]

Verb[edit]

engender (third-person singular simple present engenders, present participle engendering, simple past and past participle engendered)

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To beget (of a man); to bear or conceive (of a woman). [14th–19th c.]
  2. (transitive) To give existence to, to produce (living creatures). [from 14th c.]
    • 1891, Henry James, “James Russell Lowell”, in Essays in London and Elsewhere, page 60:
      Like all interesting literary figures, he is full of tacit as well as of uttered reference to the conditions that engendered him […].
  3. (transitive) To bring into existence (a situation, quality, result etc.); to give rise to, cause, create. [from 14th c.]
    • 1603, Michel de Montaigne, “Of Crueltie”, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC, page 243:
      ME thinkes vertue is another manner of thing, and much more noble than the inclinations vnto goodneſſe, which in vs are ingendered.
    • 1928 October 8, “New Plays in Manhattan”, in Time:
      Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart managed to engender "Better Be Good to Me" and "I Must Love You," but they were neither lyrically nor musically up to standards of their Garrick Gaieties or A Connecticut Yankee.
    • 2009 December 21, Jonathan Glancey, “The art of industry”, in The Guardian:
      Manufacturing is not simply about brute or emergency economics. It's also about a sense of involvement and achievement engendered by shaping and crafting useful, interesting, well-designed things.
  4. (intransitive) To assume form; to come into existence; to be caused or produced.
    • 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:
      Thick Clouds are ſpread, and Storms engender there,
      And Thunders Voice, which wretched Mortals fear,
      And Winds that on their Wings, cold Winter bear.
  5. (obsolete, intransitive) To copulate, to have sex. [15th–19th c.]
    • 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:
      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 […]
    • 1667, John Milton, “Book II”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC, lines 790–800:
      I fled, but he purſu’d (though more, it ſeems,
      Inflam’d with luſt then rage) and ſwifter far,
      Me overtook his mother all diſmaid,
      And in embraces forcible and foule
      Ingendring with me, of that rape begot
      Theſe yelling Monſters that with ceaſleſs cry
      Surround me, as thou ſawſt […]
Synonyms[edit]
Translations[edit]
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

Etymology 2[edit]

From en- +‎ gender.

Verb[edit]

engender (third-person singular simple present engenders, present participle engendering, simple past and past participle engendered)

  1. (critical theory) To endow with gender; to create gender or enhance the importance of gender. [from 20th c.]
    • 1981 April 11, Group Material Collective Changing Arttistic Definitions, “Philip Shehadi”, in Gay Community News, page 6:
      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.
    • 1992, Anne Cranny-Francis, Engendered Fictions, page 2:
      As such they are an important way of understanding both how texts are engendered (how they articulate particular sex or gender role) and how they engender their consumers.
    • 1996, Steven C Ward, Reconfiguring Truth, page xviii:
      I focus on […] the efforts of feminist critics of science to examine the engendered origins and implications of scientific rationality and modern epistemology.

Anagrams[edit]

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