Neutering

Part of speech: noun, verb

Definitions

1. The act of surgically excising reproductive organs in animals to stop reproduction by eliminating their ability to breed
2. The procedure of removing or disabling an animal's reproductive organs to prevent breeding
3. The act of rendering an animal incapable of reproduction through surgery

Etymology: "Neutering" is the form of "neuter" used for the act itself, and the story begins with a grammatical idea. Latin "neuter" was built from "ne", meaning "not", and "uter", meaning "either", so it literally meant "neither of the two". Ancient grammarians used it for words that were neither masculine nor feminine, and the sense of being neither one thing nor the other is what carried over into English. The Latin word was itself a translation of a Greek one. The Koine Greek "oudeteros" meant "neither one", and Latin grammarians borrowed it as a semantic loan, copying its meaning into a new word built from native parts. The same "uter" root survives in English "either", "whether" and "neither", so "neuter" is a distant cousin of those everyday words. English took "neuter" from Middle English "neutre", and the sense of a creature with no sexual role came later, from the idea of being neither male nor female. Applying it to surgically sterilising an animal follows naturally: "neutering" describes making the animal neither able to reproduce nor fully one sex in that respect.

Synonyms: castration, sterilization