A Gender
- (obsolete) Class; kind. [14th-19th c.]
- (grammar) A division of nouns and pronouns (and sometimes of other parts of speech) into masculine or feminine, and sometimes other categories like neuter or common, and animate or inanimate. [from 14th c.]
- (traditional, proscribed) Sex (a category such as "male" or "female" into which sexually-reproducing organisms are divided on the basis of their reproductive roles in their species). [from 15th c.]
- Identification as a man, a woman or something else, and association with a (social) role or set of behavioral and cultural traits, clothing, etc; a category to which a person belongs on this basis. (Compare gender role, gender identity.) [from 20th c.]
- (grammar) Synonym of voice (“particular way of inflecting or conjugating verbs”)
- (hardware) The quality which distinguishes connectors, which may be male (fitting into another connector) and female (having another connector fit into it), or genderless/androgynous (capable of fitting together with another connector of the same type). [from 20th c.]
Usage notes
Since the 1960s, it is increasingly common—particularly in academic contexts—to distinguish between sex and gender, the former being taken as inherent biological distinctions and the latter as constructed social and cultural ones. See Wikipedia's article on the Sex and gender distinction.