Citations:neuter

English citations of neuter

adjective: more neuter (one quality) than _ (some other quality)

• 1917, Puck

  About two hours afterward, the superior male person, no longer superior and more neuter than masculine, might have been seen staggering along a back street in an alarming state of exhaustion.

• 1968, Princeton Alumni Weekly, princeton alumni weekly, page 107:

  We began to feel like something other than women. After about six weeks we all found ourselves checking with each other, “Do you think it’s possible that they haven’t noticed we’re girls?” “They seem to think that if we’re here we can’t be girls.” Some of us thought of appearing one day in jackets and ties to see if anyone noticed a difference. The atmosphere was more neuter than masculine. The boys were no happier with it than we. As we were defeminized so they were emasculated.

• 2010, Raichō Hiratsuka, Teruko Craig, In the Beginning, Woman was the Sun: The Autobiography of a Japanese Feminist, Columbia University Press (→ISBN), page 69:

  Narrow-minded and unwilling to listen to others, she was good at parroting Naruse Sensei’s ideas, but despite her air of superiority, she had obviously never thought about them deeply. One of the more active leaders in the dorm was Inoue Hideko, a home economics student who later became president of the college. Considerably older—she was said to be married—capable, and efficient, she spoke in a clipped, precise manner and gave the impression of being more neuter than feminine.

• 2011, Bruce Sklarew, Myra Sklarew, The Journey of Child Development: Selected Papers of Joseph D. Noshpitz, Routledge (→ISBN):

  My wardrobe is more neuter than feminine;

• 2012, Peter Tyler, Richard Woods, The Bloomsbury Guide to Christian Spirituality, A&C Black (→ISBN), page 338:

  I must admit that I believe typical Sunday religion is much more ‘neuter’ than either healthily masculine or healthily feminine, although it often has elements of both, depending on the denomination, culture and specific event or liturgy.

• 2014, Chip Martin, A School of London: A Trilogy, Starhaven (→ISBN), page 342

  ... only reflect on how much she’d given up by producing play after play yet no children – which of course, owing to her tendencies (doubtless more neuter than gay, Gisela had concluded in the week following Margot’s outburst), she would never have done even if she could have.

• 2014, Donald L. Kaufmann, Bramble, Infant Martian (→ISBN), page 427:

  With a self-styled Alaskan virginity that made him more neuter than male, Vose somehow did not fit into the pattern of emulation that had shaped Bramble ever since his prehistory. Ever since coming to Alaska, he had hoped to continue his allegiance to a male line that had stretched from Medwick (who knew more about women than women did themselves) to Monte and Rico and Luciano or any males who had either seen Naples or its outlying volcano as they lay dying.

• 2015, H. Spencer Bloch, Treating The Other Third: Vicissitudes of Adolescent Development and Therapy, Karnac Books (→ISBN), page 133:

  Even though neither parent had encouraged it, from relatively early on Rachel had always preferred to play with boys and engage in boys’ games/sports. In contrast to her ultra-feminine sister, Rachel balked at wearing skirts/dresses, and when younger had bespoken wishes to have been born a boy, because they were stronger and had other advantages. She seemed more neuter than boy-like to her parents when she began therapy.

adjective: comparative

• 2000, Barbara Unterbeck, Gender in Grammar and Cognition, Walter de Gruyter (→ISBN), page 779:

  The only model of Russian gender I’m aware of within which it is possible to talk about a prototypical representative of a gender, or to say that some nouns are more masculine, more feminine or more neuter than others, is the schema-based approach proposed by Doleschal (1993: 77-127)

• 2014, Frances Garrett Connell, With One Fool Left in the World, No One is Stranded: Scenes from an Older Afghanistan, Author House (→ISBN), page 281:

  He sits totally still in the chilly room where a fire has yet to be started, both of us awkward, myself feeling more neuter than ever in my present, unprotected state.

• 2014, C. F. Keil, Franz Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament:

  The heathen receive the epithet of םיהלא יחכשׁ (which is more neuter than יחכשׁ, Psa 50:22); for God has not left them without a witness of Himself, that they could not know of Him, ...

• (Can we date this quote?), Charles Winick, Desexualization in American Life, Transaction Publishers (→ISBN), page 201:

  A company’s offices are likely to look far more neuter than in the days when they were decorated with more attention to sex differences and individual requirements.

adjective: superlative

• 1894, André Lefèvre, Race and Language, page 28:

  Let us take the most neuter of demonstratives, ...

• 1972, Great Britain. Parliament. House of Lords, The Parliamentary Debates (Hansard): Official Report:

  But since even the Department of Trade and Industry declared in Committee the most neuter of neutral stands, and since that position was reached ...

• 2004, Hélène Cixous, Lorene M. Birden, Neuter, Bucknell University Press (→ISBN), page 47:

  [A] grammatical analysis of “It” in this sentence could take the place of an epigraph or the title of part of this book, and would cast a feeble glow on the most secret regions of this text, and the most neuter ones,

noun sense: intransitive verb

• 1823, George henry Noehden, A Grammar of the German Language, fourth edition, self-published, page 311 [1]:

  Folgen, to follow, is a neuter, construed with the dative case; befolgen, to follow, in a metaphorical sense, to obey, a verb transitive, with the accusative; […]