But if I could, by Him that gave me life, I would attach you all and make you stoop Unto the sovereign mercy of the king; But since I cannot, be it known to you I do remain asneuter.
1672,Robert South, “A Sermon Preach’d at Westminster-Abbey, on the Twenty Ninth ofMay, 1672. Being the Anniversary Festival appointed by Act of Parliament, for the Happy Restoration of KingCharles II”, inTwelve Sermons and Discourses on Several Subjects and Occasions[1], 6th edition, volume 5, London: Jonah Bowyer, published1727, page271:
This is certain, that in all our Undertakings God will be either our Friend or our Enemy. For Providence never standsneuter[…]
[A]s their firſt Security, they did all they could to foment War betwixt the neighbouring Negroes, remainingNeuter themselves, by which Means, thoſe who were overcome conſtantly fled to them for Protection, otherwiſe they must be either killed or made Slaves.
1973, Nancy Frazier, Myra Sadker,Sexism in school and society:
A relay race that does not match teams but integrates the fastest and the slowest in one race against the mostneuter of all adversaries — time.
(grammar) Having a form which is not masculine nor feminine; or having a form which is not ofcommon gender.
[…] I should never have anticipated that natural selection could have been efficient in so high a degree, had not the case of theseneuter insects convinced me of the fact.
2000, Jan Hutson,The Chicken Ranch: The True Story of the Best Little Whorehouse in Texas,→ISBN, page30:
Rich girls stayed home and got married and then "put out" occasionally, but only as their wifely duty. Prior to the sexual revolution in the 1960s southern belles were the mostneuter members of the human race[.]
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions atWiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
(biology) An organism, either vegetable or animal, which at its maturity has nogenerativeorgans, or but imperfectly developed ones, as a plant withoutstamens orpistils, as the gardenHydrangea; especially, one of the imperfectly developed females of certain social insects, as of theant and the commonhoneybee, which perform the labors of the community, and are calledworkers.
1999 July 21, ipso facto, “can anyone out there tell me...”, inalt.eunuchs.questions[2] (Usenet):
the information i acquire may help me finalize my decision to become aneuter. let me say that castration is (for me) in no way a short term goal. it's something i've heard about, thought about, and believe may benefit me personally.
You can change yourself into aneuter, but you can't become the opposite sex.
The act of neutering (typically an animal)
2001 March 14, Shelly, “Shih tzu questions.”, inrec.pets.dogs.behavior[5] (Usenet):
Well, we've had a young (probably around a year old, but I'm guessing), intact (he's scheduled for aneuter, but it's one of those "when we get a spare minute" type of things) male Shih-tzu/shih-tzu mix come in about a month ago.
A person who takes no part in acontest; someone remainingneutral.
But if you should beecome eyther a counterfayt Protestant, or a perverse Papist, or a colde and carelessenewter (which God forbid) the harme could not be expressed which you should do to your native Cuntrie.
1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym;Robert Burton],The Anatomy of Melancholy:[…], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire:[…] John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps,→OCLC, partition I, section 2, member 4, subsection iv:
Friends,neuters, enemies, all are as one, to make a fool a madman is their sport […].
Compound verbs other than those already spoken of wherebyneuters are made active, are very rare, as I have already hinted under the head of nouns.
1971, Harry Hoijer, “Athapaskan Morphology”, in Jesse O. Sawyer, editor,Studies in American Indian Languages, University of California Press, published1973,→ISBN,page130:
In all the Apachean languages, verbs are divided into two major categories,neuters and actives, each of which may be further divided into intransitives, transitives, and passives.
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions atWiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
2012 June 26, Genevieve Koski, “Music: Reviews: Justin Bieber:Believe”, inThe Onion AV Club[7]:
Theneutering extends to Believe’s guest stars, with warm-and-fuzzy verses from Ludacris (“I love everything about you / You’re imperfectly perfect”), Big Sean (“I don’t know if this makes sense, but you’re my hallelujah”), Nicki Minaj (who at least squeaks a “bitches” into her verse), and especially Drake, whose desire to hug and kiss the object of his affection on “Right Here” is reminiscent of The Red Hot Chili Peppers on Krusty’s Comeback Special.
1983 December 3, Warren Blumenfeld, “Am Tikva”, inGay Community News, volume11, number20, page 7:
At their religious services Am Tikva makes all attempts to de-genderize the liturgy byneutering English nouns and pronouns and, when Hebrew is used, by using both masculine and the feminine forms of the language.
In the grammatical senses, the declension of this adjective is not pronominal, but attributive (regular). Thus for the sense of the grammatical category of "neuter gender", the genitive isneutrī (generis), and the dative isneutrō (generī).
eu is confined to the formsneu, ceu, seu, the interjectionsheu andheus, and Greek proper names and borrowings such asOrpheus, Europa, euge, eunuchus. [...] The sound may be produced by combining a shorte with anu; what must certainly be avoided is the pronunciation [yū] as in the Englishneuter1 [...]. Latinneuter is normally trisyllabic, i.e.nĕŭter.
^This word is used 11 times by Horace, Ovid, Statius and Lucan together, and never appears withneu- holding ictus; as such, it can always be scanned nĕ.ŭ- (e.g. ut nĕ.ŭ|ter Tā|lis..., Luc. 2.63) and provides no evidence for a diphthongal pronunciation /ne͡u̯.ter/ in these poets. Not used by Vergil or Catullus. An instance of the word in Seneca the Younger'sApocolocyntosis (§12) clearly treats nĕ- as a separate short vowel:saepĕ nĕ|ut.rā || quis nunc | iū.dex; similarly at Anthologia Latina 786, 3. The ictus, and hence the diphthong, is first attested in Terentianus Maurus, and in Late Latin poets becomes usual.
^Nevertheless, it's still regularly trisyllabic for Consentius writing in the 5th century Gaul:item si dicat aliquis 'neutrum' disyllabum, quod trisyllabum fere enuntiamus, barbarismum faciet "likewise, if someone says 'neutrum' as a two-syllable when it's normally pronounced as a trisyllable, this will be a foreigner's mispronunciation."
