Sexing

Part of speech: noun, verb

Definitions

1. Identifying whether a young animal, such as a chick, is male or female ; making something more provocative or appealing in a sexual way
2. Establishing the gender of an animal, often a bird or fish, by examination ; giving a product, film or image added sexual allure
3. The act of determining whether an animal is male or female ; the practice of injecting sensual or erotic appeal into something dull

Etymology: The verb "sexing" is simply the present participle and gerund of "sex", so its story is really the story of the root. That root, Latin "sexus", is traced back to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to cut, cut off, sever", which suggests the original idea was of division, a splitting of the living world into two sections, male and female. English took the sense of "sex" from Old French "sexe", which covered both gender and the genitals, and that Latin-French route largely displaced the native Old English word "hād", meaning "sex" or "gender". The sense of "sex" as a category shifted over time. Usage for women was influenced by the Middle French phrase "le sexe", meaning "women", and the word was attested in that sense by 1580. In the nineteenth century, English calqued the French "troisième sexe", the "third sex", first to describe masculine women in 1817 and then homosexuals in 1847. Its sense of sexual intercourse appears only in 1899, in the writings of H. G. Wells.

Synonyms: sex determination