On her maiden voyage, the Bismarck collided with another ship but she sustained no damage. Even ships named after men, such as the German battleship Bismarck, are treated as feminine: A boat may have a mothership and sister ships. Feminizing ships is a markedly entrenched practice, the tradition tracing back in English to as early as the 14th century according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Vehicles, including ships, cars, trains and even engines often take the feminine gender, especially in informal contexts and when spoken of by men (“My car, she’s a beauty.”). The following are some examples of metaphorical gender in English usage: Vehicles Since English lacks grammatical gender, English speakers are given creative licence to personify objects as whichever gender they choose. This phenomenon of imposing masculinity or femininity on sexless objects and abstract concepts is used for poetic effect in order to personify objects or show strong emotional involvement with them, especially when calling an object it seems too cold. Metaphorical gender can be applied to ships (1) and many other entities, such as stock prices (2): (It is worth noting that, as more people take on more fluid gender identities, natural gender does not always conform to biological sex.) When English usage subverts natural gender, this is called metaphorical gender. Rather, English employs natural gender, where animate entities with a biological sex take the masculine ( he/ him/ his/ himself) or feminine ( she/ her/ hers/ herself) gender, and inanimate nouns take the neuter ( it/ its/ itself) gender. Unlike many modern languages, such as German and the Romance languages, modern English does not employ grammatical gender, where each noun is assigned masculine, feminine or neuter gender regardless of whether the noun has a biological sex-for example, table is feminine in French ( la table) and masculine in German ( ein Tisch). This article will provide an outline of gender in language and the creative use of gender in English. Why are ships frequently referred to as she and her? This question points to the phenomenon of using creative gender assignment on nouns in English.
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