Genderspeak

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Gender-neutral language or communication. derogatory, uncountable

    "'Man' when used of the human race is the primary use, which the Shorter Oxford Dictionary still upholds, and so what we are seeing is not a change of inclusive language so much as a kind of 'genderspeak'."

  2. 2
    Gendered language or communication. uncountable

    "Eliminate genderspeak from job titles and terminology. Replace salesman and mailman with sales representative and mail carrier."

  3. 3
    The communication style and/or speech pattern associated with a particular gender. uncountable

    "Mary Crawford psychology professor at the University of South Carolina and an authority in the field of "genderspeak," complains that Tannen has not thoroughly analyzed the power issues involved in speech."

Synonyms

All synonyms
genderlect

Example

More examples

"'Man' when used of the human race is the primary use, which the Shorter Oxford Dictionary still upholds, and so what we are seeing is not a change of inclusive language so much as a kind of 'genderspeak'."

Etymology

From gender + -speak.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.