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But if I could, by Him that gave me life, I would attach you all and make you stoop Unto the sovereign mercy of the king; But since I cannot, be it known to you I do remain as neuter.
1672, Robert South, “A Sermon Preach’d at Westminster-Abbey, on the Twenty Ninth of May, 1672. Being the Anniversary Festival appointed by Act of Parliament, for the Happy Restoration of King Charles II”, in Twelve Sermons and Discourses on Several Subjects and Occasions, 6th edition, volume 5, London: Jonah Bowyer, published 1727, page 271:
This is certain, that in all our Undertakings God will be either our Friend or our Enemy. For Providence never stands neuter[…]
[A]s their firſt Security, they did all they could to foment War betwixt the neighbouring Negroes, remaining Neuter themselves, by which Means, thoſe who were overcome conſtantly fled to them for Protection, otherwiſe they must be either killed or made Slaves.
1973, Nancy Frazier, Myra Sadker, Sexism in school and society:
A relay race that does not match teams but integrates the fastest and the slowest in one race against the most neuter of all adversaries — time.
(grammar) Having a form which is not masculine nor feminine; or having a form which is not of common gender.
a neuter noun
the neuter definite article
a neuter termination
the neuter gender
1982 April 10, Maida Tilchen, “June Arnold Dies of Cancer”, in Gay Community News, page 3:
In The Cook and the Carpenter, Arnold used the device of a neuter pronoun "na," instead of assigning gender to the characters.
[…] I should never have anticipated that natural selection could have been efficient in so high a degree, had not the case of these neuter insects convinced me of the fact.
2000, Jan Hutson, The Chicken Ranch: The True Story of the Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, →ISBN, page 30:
Rich girls stayed home and got married and then "put out" occasionally, but only as their wifely duty. Prior to the sexual revolution in the 1960s southern belles were the most neuter members of the human race[.]
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
(biology) An organism, either vegetable or animal, which at its maturity has no generativeorgans, or but imperfectly developed ones, as a plant without stamens or pistils, as the garden Hydrangea; especially, one of the imperfectly developed females of certain social insects, as of the ant and the common honeybee, which perform the labors of the community, and are called workers.
A person who takes no part in a contest; someone remaining neutral.
But if you should beecome eyther a counterfayt Protestant, or a perverse Papist, or a colde and carelesse newter (which God forbid) the harme could not be expressed which you should do to your native Cuntrie.
1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy:, 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC, partition I, section 2, member 4, subsection iv:
Friends, neuters, enemies, all are as one, to make a fool a madman is their sport […].
(grammar) A noun of the neutergender; any one of those words which have the terminations usually found in neuter words.
(grammar) An intransitive verb or state-of-being verb.
1820, M. Santagnello, A Dictionary of the Peculiarities of the Italian Language, G. and W. B. Whittaker, page 185:
Make one do, oract (to), fare fare, fare agire, with an accusative when the verb is a neuter, and with a dative when otherwise.
1847, Brian Houghton Hodgson, Essay the First; On the Kocch, Bódo and Dhimál Tribes, in Three Parts, J. Thomas, page 119:
Compound verbs other than those already spoken of whereby neuters are made active, are very rare, as I have already hinted under the head of nouns.
1971, Harry Hoijer, “Athapaskan Morphology”, in Jesse O. Sawyer, editor, Studies in American Indian Languages, University of California Press, published 1973, →ISBN, page 130:
In all the Apachean languages, verbs are divided into two major categories, neuters and actives, each of which may be further divided into intransitives, transitives, and passives.
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
2012 June 26, Genevieve Koski, “Music: Reviews: Justin Bieber: Believe”, in The Onion AV Club:
The neutering extends to Believe’s guest stars, with warm-and-fuzzy verses from Ludacris (“I love everything about you / You’re imperfectly perfect”), Big Sean (“I don’t know if this makes sense, but you’re my hallelujah”), Nicki Minaj (who at least squeaks a “bitches” into her verse), and especially Drake, whose desire to hug and kiss the object of his affection on “Right Here” is reminiscent of The Red Hot Chili Peppers on Krusty’s Comeback Special.
1983 December 3, Warren Blumenfeld, “Am Tikva”, in Gay Community News, volume 11, number 20, page 7:
At their religious services Am Tikva makes all attempts to de-genderize the liturgy by neutering English nouns and pronouns and, when Hebrew is used, by using both masculine and the feminine forms of the language.
In the grammatical senses, the declension of this adjective is not pronominal, but attributive (regular). Thus for the sense of the grammatical category of "neuter gender", the genitive is neutrī (generis), and the dative is neutrō (generī).
eu is confined to the forms neu, ceu, seu, the interjections heu and heus, and Greek proper names and borrowings such as Orpheus, Europa, euge, eunuchus. The sound may be produced by combining a short e with an u; what must certainly be avoided is the pronunciation as in the English neuter1 .
Latin neuter is normally trisyllabic, i.e. nĕŭter.
^ This word is used 11 times by Horace, Ovid, Statius and Lucan together, and never appears with neu- holding ictus; as such, it can always be scanned nĕ.ŭ- (e.g. ut nĕ.ŭ|ter Tā|lis..., Luc. 2.63) and provides no evidence for a diphthongal pronunciation /ne͡u̯.ter/ in these poets. Not used by Vergil or Catullus. An instance of the word in Seneca the Younger's Apocolocyntosis (§12) clearly treats nĕ- as a separate short vowel: saepĕ nĕ|ut.rā || quis nunc | iū.dex; similarly at Anthologia Latina 786, 3. The ictus, and hence the diphthong, is first attested in Terentianus Maurus, and in Late Latin poets becomes usual.
^ Nevertheless, it's still regularly trisyllabic for Consentius writing in the 5th century Gaul: item si dicat aliquis 'neutrum' disyllabum, quod trisyllabum fere enuntiamus, barbarismum faciet "likewise, if someone says 'neutrum' as a two-syllable when it's normally pronounced as a trisyllable, this will be a foreigner's mispronunciation."