A
gender-specific pronoun is a
pronoun associated with a particular
grammatical gender, such as masculine, feminine, or neuter, or with a social gender (or sex), such as female or male. Examples include the
English third-person personal pronouns he and
she. A
gender-neutral pronoun, by contrast, is a pronoun that is not associated with a particular grammatical or social gender and that does not imply, for instance, male or female. Many English pronouns are gender-neutral, including
they (which in certain contexts can also refer to a singular antecedent such as
everyone,
a person, or
the patient).