engender

English

WOTD – 25 February 2010

Alternative forms

Pronunciation

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

Etymology 1

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

Verb

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", Essays in London and Elsewhere, p.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, printed at London: By Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount [], OCLC 946730821, 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, "New Plays in Manhattan", Time, 8 Oct.:
      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, Jonathan Glancey, "The art of industry", The Guardian, 21 Dec.:
      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, John Dryden, transl., “Ovid’s Metamorphoses”, in 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. A Poem Written in Ten Books, London: Printed [by Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker [] [a]nd by Robert Boulter [] [a]nd Matthias Walker, [], OCLC 228722708; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: The Text Exactly Reproduced from the First Edition of 1667: [], London: Basil Montagu Pickering [], 1873, OCLC 230729554:
      , 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
Translations
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Etymology 2

From en- + gender.

Verb

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.]
    • 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

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