Are there masculine or feminine words in English? In general, there’s no distinction between masculine and feminine in English nouns. But sometimes we show gender in different words when referring to people or animals. About a quarter of the world’s languages uses gender. In technical terms, gender in languages is just one way of breaking up nouns into classes or categories. A noun is a part of language that names a person, place, thing, idea, action or quality. For example, nouns can refer to an individual name of a person, like Mike or Amrita. Also, it can refer to a place or thing. Examples of nouns might include Sydney, Louis Vuitton, or Qantas. In some languages, nouns, such as Qantas, can be male or female. Masculine or feminine. In general, there’s no distinction between masculine and feminine in the English language. But sometimes we show gender in different words when referring to people or animals.