Maskuline

Maskuline is a term used to denote the masculine gender or masculine form in linguistic and academic contexts. In English, the standard adjective for this concept is masculine; maskuline is a less common variant or a spelling encountered primarily in discussions about non-English grammatical systems or in historical texts.

Linguistic usage

In languages with grammatical gender, nouns, adjectives, and sometimes articles or pronouns inflect to agree with gender categories such as masculine and feminine (and sometimes neuter). The specific word forms for these categories vary by language. Maskuline is sometimes used in typological descriptions or glossaries to refer to the masculine category in a language-agnostic way, or to discuss cross-language comparisons where a term akin to “masculine” appears with different spellings.

Orthographic notes

The appearance of maskuline reflects the influence of different linguistic traditions. Many languages use forms like masculin, maskulin, or masculine, and English-language scholarship may adopt maskuline when explicitly labeling a language’s masculine set of forms. In standard English prose, however, masculine is overwhelmingly used.

Relation to gender identity

Maskuline should not be confused with contemporary social notions of masculinity or gender identity. When used in linguistic contexts, it primarily concerns grammatical gender or lexical gender categories rather than personal or social attributes.

See also

Masculine, grammatical gender, gender linguistics, gender terms, language typology.