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adjective

Epicene adj., n.

Common to both sexes; a term applied, in grammar, to such nouns as have but one form of gender, either the masculine or feminine, to indicate animals of both sexes; as boys, bos, for the ox and cow; sometimes applied to eunuchs and hermaphrodites.

Fig.: Sexless; neither one thing nor the other. "The literary prigs epicene." "He represented an epicene species, neither churchman nor layman."

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Etymology of 'Epicene'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Epicene" Quotes from Famous Books

... friendly attack on "Administrative Nihilism," which I will send you; in the same number of the "Fortnightly" there is an absurd epicene splutter on the same subject by Mill's step-daughter, Miss Helen Taylor. I intended to publish the paper separately, with a note about Spencer's criticism, but I have had no energy nor faculty to do ...

— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley

... the following is your bill of fare. Fairies you have by scores in flesh-coloured tights, spangles, and paucity of petticoats; gnomes of every description, from the gigantic glittering diamond beetle, to the grotesque and dusky tadpole. Epicene princes, whose taper limbs and swelling busts are well worth the scrutiny of the opera-glass—dragons vomiting at once red flames and witticisms about the fountains in Trafalgar Square—Dan O'Connell figuring in the feathers ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various