transgender
Meanings
- Of a person: having a gender (identity) which is different from one's assigned sex; that is, the identity of a trans man, trans woman, or someone non-binary, for example, agender, bigender, or third-gender.
- Of a person: having a gender (identity) which is opposite from the sex one was assigned at birth: being assigned male but having a female gender, or vice versa (that is, not including a non-binary identity).
- Of a person: transgressing or not identifying with culturally conventional gender roles and categories of male or female.
- Of or pertaining to transgender people (adjective sense 1), or their experiences or identity.
- Of a space: intended primarily for transgender people.
- Of a space: available for use by transgender people, rather than only non-transgender people.
- Synonym of crossgender (“across multiple genders”).
- A transgender person
- Transgender people collectively.
- Synonym of transgenderism (“the state of being transgender”).
- To change the gender of (someone).
- To change the sex of (someone).
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *terh₂- Proto-Indo-European *-t Proto-Indo-European *térh₂t Proto-Indo-European *-ónts Proto-Indo-European *tr̥h₂ónts Proto-Indo-European *tr̥h₂n̥ts Proto-Italic *trāns Proto-Italic *trāns- Latin trans-bor. English trans- Proto-Indo-European *ǵenh₁- Proto-Indo-European *-os Proto-Indo-European *ǵénh₁os Proto-Italic *genos Latin genus Old French gendrebor. Middle English gendre English gender English transgender The adjective sense is derived from trans- (“extending across, through, or over”) + gender, modelled after transsexual (adjective) and probably modified from transgenderism which was coined by the American psychiatrist John F. Oliven (1915–1975) in 1965; the terms transgender, transgenderal, transgendered, transgenderist, and similar terms arose in the decades after this. By the 1990s, the word transgender had acquired its current senses, and had also largely displaced the earlier term transsexual: see the usage notes. The noun and verb senses are derived from the adjective. Regarding noun sense 2 (“synonym of transgenderism”), compare transsex (noun).