- manservant, maidservant;
- mother bird;
- cock sparrow, hen sparrow;
- boy friend, girl friend;
- he-wolf, she-wolf.
6. The gender of a noun may be indicated by some accompanying part of speech, usually by a pronoun.
- My cat is always washing his face.
- The intruder shook her head.
- I was confronted by a pitiful creature, haggard and unshaven.
Note. The variations in form studied under 2 and 3 (above) are often regarded as inflections. In reality, however, the masculine and the feminine are different words. Thus, baroness is not an inflectional form of baron, but a distinct noun, made from baron by adding the ending ess, precisely as barony and baronage are made from baron by adding the endings y and age. The process is rather that of derivation or noun-formation than that of inflection.
II. NUMBER
71. Number is that property of substantives which shows whether they indicate one person, place, or thing or more than one.
There are two numbers,—the singular and the plural.
The singular number denotes but one person, place, or thing. The plural number denotes more than one person, place, or thing.
72. Most nouns form the plural number by adding s or es to the singular.
Examples: