mannelijk

Mannelijk is a Dutch adjective meaning male or masculine. It describes the male sex of living beings and is also used in linguistic and grammatical contexts to label masculine gender. In biology and everyday language, phrases such as “mannelijk geslacht” or “mannelijk voortplantingssysteem” are common. For humans, natural gender is usually shown with pronouns such as hij (he) and zij (she), while het is used for neuter nouns.

In Dutch grammar, the language historically distinguished three genders: mannelijk (masculine), vrouwelijk (feminine), and onzijdig (neuter). In contemporary standard Dutch, the line between masculine and feminine is largely blurred, and many nouns take the common gender and thus the definite article de, while neuter nouns take het. Adjectives describing nouns in the definite form typically take the -e ending, as in de mannelijke docent (the male teacher) or het mannelijke kind (the male child). The inflected form with de or het is part of the broader system of gender agreement in Dutch.

The term appears in linguistic, educational, and demographic contexts to discuss gender, concord, and pronoun use, and it is distinguished from vrouwelijke (feminine) and onzijdig or neuter (neuter). While the concept of grammatical gender remains part of Dutch description, the practical use of gender terms often centers on biological sex in everyday speech and formal contexts.