English

Alternative forms

• engendre [14th–16th c.], ingender [15th–17th c.]

Verb

engender ‎(third-person singular simple present engenders, present participle engendering, simple past and past participle engendered)

1. (obsolete, transitive) To beget (of a man); to bear or conceive (of a woman). [14th–19th c.]
   • 1599, William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act V:

     O Error soone conceyu'd, / Thou neuer com'st vnto a happy byrth, / But kil'st the Mother that engendred thee.

2. (transitive) To give existence to, to produce (living creatures). [from 14th c.]
   • 1891, Henry James, "James Russell Lowell", Essays in London and Elsewhere, p.60:

     Like all interesting literary figures, he is full of tacit as well as of uttered reference to the conditions that engendered him […].

3. (transitive) To bring into existence (a situation, quality, result etc.); to give rise to, cause, create. [from 14th c.]
   • 1603, John Florio, translating Michel de Montaigne, Essayes, London: Edward Blount, OCLC 946730821, II.11:

     Me thinks vertue is another manner of thing, and much more noble than the inclinations unto goodnesse, which in us are ingendered.

   • 1928, "New Plays in Manhattan", Time, 8 Oct.:

     Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart managed to engender "Better Be Good to Me" and "I Must Love You," but they were neither lyrically nor musically up to standards of their Garrick Gaieties or A Connecticut Yankee.

   • 2009, Jonathan Glancey, "The art of industry", The Guardian, 21 Dec.:

     Manufacturing is not simply about brute or emergency economics. It's also about a sense of involvement and achievement engendered by shaping and crafting useful, interesting, well-designed things.

4. (intransitive) To assume form; to come into existence; to be caused or produced.
   • Dryden

     Thick clouds are spread, and storms engender there.

5. (obsolete, intransitive) To copulate, to have sex. [15th–19th c.]
   • 1651, Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan:

     But that the bodies of the reprobate, who make the kingdom of Satan, shall also be glorious or spiritual bodies, or that they shall be as the angels of God, neither eating, drinking, nor engendering […], there is no place of Scripture to prove it […].

   • 1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book II:

     I fled, but he pursu'd (though more, it seems, / Inflam'd with lust then rage) and swifter far, / Me overtook his mother all dismaid, / And in embraces forcible and foule / Ingendring with me, of that rape begot / These yelling Monsters […].

Synonyms

• (to bring into existence): beget, conjure, create, produce, make, craft, manufacture, invent, assemble, generate

Translations

Etymology 2

From en- +‎ gender.

Verb

engender ‎(third-person singular simple present engenders, present participle engendering, simple past and past participle engendered)

1. (critical theory) To endow with gender; to create gender or enhance the importance of gender. [from 20th c.]
   • 1992, Anne Cranny-Francis, Engendered Fictions, p. 2:

     As such they are an important way of understanding both how texts are engendered (how they articulate particular sex or gender role) and how they engender their consumers.

   • 1996, Steven C Ward, Reconfiguring Truth, p. xviii:

     I focus on [...] the efforts of feminist critics of science to examine the engendered origins and implications of scientific rationality and modern epistemology.

Anagrams

• regenned