neuter

• POS: Adjective, Noun, Verb (transitive)
• HYPHEN: neu=ter

CIDE DICTIONARY

neuter, a. [L., fr. ne not + uter whether; akin to E. whether. See No, and Whether, and cf. Neither.].

•  Neither the one thing nor the other; on neither side; impartial; neutral.  [1913 Webster]

  "In all our undertakings God will be either our friend or our enemy; for Providence never stands neuter."  [1913 Webster]
•  Having a form belonging more especially to words which are not appellations of males or females; expressing or designating that which is of neither sex; as, a neuter noun; a neuter termination; the neuter gender.  [1913 Webster]
•  Having no generative organs, or imperfectly developed ones; sexless. See Neuter, n., 3.  [1913 Webster]

neuter, n. 

•  A person who takes no part in a contest; one who is either indifferent to a cause or forbears to interfere; a neutral.  [1913 Webster]

  "The world's no neuter; it will wound or save."  [1913 Webster]
•  A noun of the neuter gender; any one of those words which have the terminations usually found in neuter words.  [1913 Webster]
•  An organism, either vegetable or animal, which at its maturity has no generative organs, or but imperfectly developed ones, as a plant without stamens or pistils, as the garden Hydrangea; esp., one of the imperfectly developed females of certain social insects, as of the ant and the common honeybee, which perform the labors of the community, and are called workers.  [1913 Webster]

neuter, v. t. 

 To render incapable of sexual reproduction; to remove or alter the sexual organs so as to make infertile; to alter; to fix; to desex; -- in male animals, to castrate; in female animals, to spay.  [PJC]

OXFORD DICTIONARY

neuter, adj., n., & v.
--adj.
1 Gram. (of a noun etc.) neither masculine nor feminine.
2 (of a plant) having neither pistils nor stamen.
3 (of an insect) sexually undeveloped.
--n.
1 Gram. a neuter word.
2 a a non-fertile insect, esp. a worker bee or ant. b a castrated animal.
--v.tr. castrate or spay.

Etymology

ME f. OF neutre or L neuter neither f. ne- not + uter either

THESAURUS

neuter

Laodicean, alter, animate, anythingarian, apathetic, asexual, capon, castrate, castrated, centrist, change, cold, common gender, contemplative, cool, cut, desex, desexualize, do-nothing, doctor, dormant, emasculate, emasculated, epicene, eunuchize, eunuchized, even, feminine, fence-sitter, fervorless, fifty-fifty, fix, frigid, frustrated, geld, gender, half-and-half, halfhearted, idle, immobile, impartial, impotent, inactive, inanimate, independent, indifferent, inert, laissez-aller, laissez-faire, lukewarm, masculine, meditative, midway, moderate, motionless, mugwump, mutilate, neutral, nonaligned, noncommitted, nonpartisan, nothingarian, on the fence, paralytic, paralyzed, passive, perfunctory, procrastinating, quiescent, quietist, quietistic, sexless, spay, stagnant, stagnating, standpat, static, stationary, tepid, third force, third world, third-force, third-world, uncommitted, uninvolved, unsex, unsexed, unsexual, vegetable, vegetative, zealless

ROGET THESAURUS

neuter

Absence of Choice

N absence of choice, no choice, Hobson's choice, first come first served, random selection, necessity, not a pin to choose, any, the first that comes, that or nothing, neutrality, indifference, indecision, arbitrariness, coercion (compulsion), neutral, neuter, indifferent, uninterested, undecided, either, who cares?, what difference does it make?, There's not a dime's worth of difference between t.

Impotence

VB be impotent, not have a leg to stand on, vouloir rompre l'anguille au genou, vouloir prendre la lune avec les dents, collapse, faint, swoon, fall into a swoon, drop, go by the board, go by the wayside, go up in smoke, end in smoke, render powerless, deprive of power, disable, disenable, disarm, incapacitate, disqualify, unfit, invalidate, deaden, cramp, tie the hands, double up, prostrate, paralyze, muzzle, cripple, becripple, maim, lame, hamstring, draw the teeth of, throttle, strangle, garrotte, garrote, ratten, silence, sprain, clip the wings of, put hors de combat, spike the guns, take the wind out of one's sails, scotch the snake, put a spoke in one's wheel, break the neck, break the back, unhinge, unfit, put out of gear, unman, unnerve, enervate, emasculate, castrate, geld, alter, neuter, sterilize, fix, shatter, exhaust, weaken.

Materiality

N materiality, materialness, corporeity, corporality, substantiality, substantialness, flesh and blood, plenum, physical condition, matter, body, substance, brute matter, stuff, element, principle, parenchyma, material, substratum, hyle, corpus, pabulum, frame, object, article, thing, something, still life, stocks and stones, materials, physics, somatology, somatics, natural philosophy, experimental philosophy, physicism, physical science, philosophie positive, materialism, materialist, physicist, somatism, somatist, material, bodily, corporeal, corporal, physical, somatic, somatoscopic, sensible, tangible, ponderable, palpable, substantial, objective, impersonal, nonsubjective, neuter, unspiritual, materialistic.