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In Portuguese, the word for "circle" is "círculo," which is masculine. However, in French, the term "cercle" (meaning "circle") is feminine. Similarly, in German, "Kreis" (also translating to "circle") is feminine.

What factors determine the gender assignment to abstract words like "circle" in different languages?

Humberto José Bortolossi
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History is by far the most important factor. Portuguese círculo, French cercle, and so on are masculine because Latin circulus was masculine, because Latin circus was masculine, because Greek kírkos was masculine. As far back as we can trace that word, it's inherited masculinity from its ancestors.

To put it differently, the gender of a word tends to become fixed when the word is adopted (based on analogy with similar-looking words, or some property of its meaning, or just arbitrary convention) and rarely changes after that.

Draconis
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  • One exception to the general stability of gender that springs to mind is the Scandinavian words for ‘bee’: Proto-Germanic *bijō- was feminine (as all its gendered descendants outside North Germanic still are); in Old Norse, it became neuter under the influence of mý ‘midge’ (and gained a more common spelling bý, still found in Icelandic and Faroese but lost again elsewhere); Swedish bi is still neuter, while Danish bi is commune and Norwegian bie can be either masculine or feminine. So it’s essentially gone feminine → neuter [analogy] → all available genders. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Oct 18 '23 at 17:57
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    Another name that changes gender according to the language is il fiore in Italian (the flower) which is masculine and la fleur in French, which is feminine, despite the fact that both come from the Latin flos, masculine. – BakerStreet Oct 18 '23 at 19:06
  • @Draconis: Why were Latin 'circulus' and Greek 'kírkos' chosen to be masculine? – Humberto José Bortolossi Oct 19 '23 at 00:30
  • @HumbertoJoséBortolossi Circulus is masculine because circus is. Kírkos is masculine for reasons lost to history. – Draconis Oct 19 '23 at 00:41
  • @Draconis and why is circus masculinre? also lost in history? – Humberto José Bortolossi Oct 19 '23 at 00:43
  • @HumbertoJoséBortolossi Circus is masculine because it's borrowed from kírkos which is masculine. – Draconis Oct 19 '23 at 00:44
  • @Draconis, now I am very very curious about the reasons why kirkos is masculine ... – Humberto José Bortolossi Oct 19 '23 at 00:46
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    @HumbertoJoséBortolossi What I'm trying to illustrate with this answer is that, for most words, the answer of "why does it have this gender" is "because its ancestor has this gender", back and back and back until we don't know what the ancestor was. – Draconis Oct 19 '23 at 00:51
  • @Draconis, I get it! thanks! – Humberto José Bortolossi Oct 19 '23 at 01:02
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    An interesting exception is the name of trees and fruit in Italian: Latin had a very regular pattern (the fruit was second declension neuter, the tree was second declension feminine). The fact that almost all second declension nouns turned masculine in Italian forced a reassignment and the fruit became feminine, while the tree became masculine, by reanalyzing the neuter plural as a feminine singular (so, e.g. from malum, malus we got melo, mela) – Denis Nardin Oct 19 '23 at 13:17