engender
Pronunciation
  • (British) IPA: /ɪnˈdʒɛn.də/, /ɛnˈdʒɛn.də/
  • (America) IPA: /ɛnˈdʒɛn.dɚ/, /ɪnˈdʒɛn.dɚ/
Verb

engender (engenders, present participle engendering; past and past participle engendered)

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To beget (of a man); to bear or conceive (of a woman). [14th–19th c.]
    • 1599, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Ivlivs Cæsar”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: Printed by Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358 ↗, [Act V, scene iii], page 129 ↗, column 1:
      O Error ſoone conceyu’d, / Thou neuer com’ſt vnto a happy byrth, / But kil’ſt the Mother that engendred thee.
  2. (transitive) To give existence to, to produce (living creatures). [from 14th c.]
    • 1891, Henry James, "James Russell Lowell", Essays in London and Elsewhere, p.60:
      Like all interesting literary figures, he is full of tacit as well as of uttered reference to the conditions that engendered him […].
  3. (transitive) To bring into existence (a situation, quality, result etc.); to give rise to, cause, create. [from 14th c.]
    • 1603, Michel de Montaigne, “Of Crueltie”, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes, […], book II, printed at London: By Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], OCLC 946730821 ↗, page 243 ↗:
      ME thinkes vertue is another manner of thing, and much more noble than the inclinations vnto goodneſſe, which in vs are ingendered.
    • 1928, "New Plays in Manhattan", Time, 8 Oct.:
      Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart managed to engender "Better Be Good to Me" and "I Must Love You," but they were neither lyrically nor musically up to standards of their Garrick Gaieties or A Connecticut Yankee.
    • 2009, Jonathan Glancey, "The art of industry", The Guardian, 21 Dec.:
      Manufacturing is not simply about brute or emergency economics. It's also about a sense of involvement and achievement engendered by shaping and crafting useful, interesting, well-designed things.
  4. (intransitive) To assume form; to come into existence; to be caused or produced.
  5. (obsolete, intransitive) To copulate, to have sex. [15th–19th c.]
    • 1667, John Milton, “Book II”, in Paradise Lost. A Poem Written in Ten Books, London: Printed [by Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […] [a]nd by Robert Boulter […] [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], OCLC 228722708 ↗; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: The Text Exactly Reproduced from the First Edition of 1667: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, OCLC 230729554 ↗, lines 790–800:
      I fled, but he purſu’d (though more, it ſeems, / Inflam’d with luſt then rage) and ſwifter far, / Me overtook his mother all diſmaid, / And in embraces forcible and foule / Ingendring with me, of that rape begot / Theſe yelling Monſters that with ceaſleſs cry / Surround me, as thou ſawſt […]
Synonyms Translations Verb

engender (engenders, present participle engendering; past and past participle engendered)

  1. (critical theory) To endow with gender; to create gender or enhance the importance of gender. [from 20th c.]



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