Gend

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. An archaic verb meaning to bring something into being, especially by producing offspring or generating a result
2. Old-fashioned term for causing something to come into existence, such as a child being born or an effect arising from a cause
3. Archaic word for producing or giving birth to something, or for allowing a condition or outcome to develop over time

Etymology: "Gend" is an old English verb meaning to give birth, and it survives today mainly in the dialect and archaic sense rather than in standard speech. It belonged to the Middle English vocabulary that also gave us words like "kin" and "kind" as relatives of the same root, though it was rare even then. Its ancestry lies in Middle English "gendren," itself borrowed from Old French "engendrer," which came from Latin "generare," meaning to beget or produce. The Latin verb was built on "genus," birth or kind, a root that also gives English "generate," "gender," and "genre." So "gend" is a shortened descendant of the same ancient stem that underlies those much more common words. Because the form shortened over the centuries, "gend" now looks like a stranger to its own family. Its long-lost siblings "engender" and "generate" carried the sense of producing into abstract territory, while the clipped version kept the literal meaning of bringing offspring into the world.