Unlike French, English usually does not use gender-specific nouns. Instead, gender is based on the actual physical gender of the noun under discussion. For example, Anglophones would refer to a spider as “it”, not “she.

Many common nouns, like "engineer" or "teacher," can refer to men or women. Once, many English nouns would change form depending on their gender -- for example, a man was called an "author" while a woman was called an "authoress" -- but this use of gender-specific nouns is very rare today. Those that are still used occasionally tend to refer to occupational categories, as in the following sentences: