“GENUS est sexus discretio.  Et sunt genera numero septem.”—­Lilii Gram., p. 10.  That is, “GENDER is the distinction of sex.  And the genders are seven in number.”  Ruddiman says, “GENUS est, discrimen nominis secundum sexum, vel ejus in structura grammatica imitatio.  Genera nominum sunt tria.”—­Ruddimanni Gram., p. 4.  That is, “GENDER is the diversity of the noun according to sex, or [it is] the imitation of it in grammatical structure.  The genders of nouns are three.”  These old definitions are no better than the newer ones cited above.  All of them are miserable failures, full of faults and absurdities.  Both the nature and the cause of their defects are in some degree explained near the close of the tenth chapter of my Introduction.  Their most prominent errors are these:  1.  They all assume, that gender, taken as one thing, is in fact two, three, or more, genders, 2.  Nearly all of them seem to say or imply, that words differ from one an other in sex, like animals. 3.  Many of them expressly confine gender, or the genders, to nouns only. 4.  Many of them confessedly exclude the neuter gender, though their authors afterwards admit this gender. 5.  That of Dr. Webster supposes, that words differing in gender never have the same “termination.”  The absurdity of this may be shown by a multitude of examples:  as, man and woman, male and female, father and mother, brother and sister.  This is better, but still not free from some other faults which I have mentioned.  For the correction of all this great batch of errors, I shall simply substitute in the Key one short definition, which appears to me to be exempt from each of these inaccuracies.

[455] Walker states this differently, and even repeats his remark, thus:  “But y preceded by a vowel is never changed:  as coy, coyly, gay, gayly.”—­Walker’s Rhyming Dict., p.x.  “Y preceded by a vowel is never changed, as boy, boys, I cloy, he cloys, etc.”—­Ib., p viii.  Walker’s twelve “Orthographical Aphorisms,” which Murray and others republish as their “Rules for Spelling,” and which in stead of amending they merely corrupt, happened through some carelessness to contain two which should have been condensed into one.  For “words ending with y preceded by a consonant,” he has not only the absurd rule or assertion above recited, but an other which is better, with an exception or remark under each, respecting “y preceded by a vowel.”  The grammarians follow him in his errors, and add to their number:  hence the repetition, or similarity, in the absurdities here quoted.  By the term “verbal nouns,” Walker meant nouns denoting agents, as carrier from carry; but Kirkham understood him to mean “participial nouns,” as the carrying.  Or rather,