page_title: Epicenity
section_title: Specialized uses
hierarchical_section_title: Epicenity / Specialized uses
caption_attribution_description: English: Proponent of pronoun "they" representing someone who doesn’t identify with either gender at the Boston Pride parade.
context_page_description: Epicenity is the lack of gender distinction, often reducing the emphasis on the masculine to allow the feminine. It includes androgyny – having both masculine and feminine characteristics.
  The adjective gender-neutral may describe epicenity.
context_section_description: In linguistics, an epicene word has the same form for male and for female referents. In some cases, the term common is also used, but should not be confused with common or appellative as a contrary to proper (as in proper noun).
  In English, for example, the epicene (or common) nouns cousin and violinist can refer to a man or a woman, and so can the epicene (or common) pronoun one. The noun stewardess and the third-person singular pronouns he and she on the other hand are not epicene (or common).
  In languages with grammatical gender, the term epicene can be used in two distinct situations:
  The same word can refer to either masculine or feminine signified concept, while retaining its own, either masculine or feminine, grammatical gender. For example, Classical Greek λαγώς (lagṓs) "hare" is masculine, but can refer to male and female hares (he-hares and she-hares), and ἀλώπηξ (alṓpēks) "fox" is feminine, but can refer to male and female foxes (he-foxes and she-foxes).  For this meaning the term common is different from epicene.
  An article, noun, adjective or pronoun has identical masculine and feminine forms, but they don't follow always one agreement pattern. For example, in French, the noun enfant "child" and the adjective espiègle "mischievous" can be either masculine or feminine, but they are differentiated by the article:
  The same can happen in French with the epicene elided singular articles (l'), the definite (les) and undefinite (des) plural articles and the contractions aux (à + les) and des (de + les) when in contact with the noun, so the adjective takes the task of marking the gender:
  For these meanings the term "common" is also used.
  However, there can be cases where the agreement cannot force the disambiguation, even with the presence of pronoun, article, noun and adjective when they are all epicene:
  This can be further complicated when dealing with spoken French (when some orthographical nuances are lost) or referring to biological entities with non-binary gender attributes, such as the hermaphrodite snail or dioecious plants.
caption: Proponent of pronoun "they" representing someone who doesn’t identify with a binary gender, at the Boston Pride parade.
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