# Questions about masculine and feminine words in Spanish **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 8, 2018, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-masculine-and-feminine-words-in-spanish/806154 "2018-01-08T19:25:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-masculine-and-feminine-words-in-spanish/806154/21 "2018-01-10T18:44:54Z")
Do people using gendered languages ever intentionally misapply genders to make a point? “Is that a romance novel you’re reading? Put _la libro_ down before somebody sees you.” ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-masculine-and-feminine-words-in-spanish/806154/22 "2018-01-10T23:52:53Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > I wonder if this is an occasional insult in gendered languages, to use the wrong gender of article deliberately to denigrate someone’s gender role? Yes, definitely. My example above of calling Angela Merkel “das Merkel” is certainly a dig at her femininity. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2018, 8:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-masculine-and-feminine-words-in-spanish/806154/23 "2018-01-11T08:34:47Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Do people using gendered languages ever intentionally misapply genders to make a point? > > “Is that a romance novel you’re reading? Put _la libro_ down before somebody sees you.” Posts 7, 13 and 17. Yep, although that particular example makes no sense… wait, are you trying to use it to indicate that romance novels are feminine? If someone was to make fun of someone else for that by a gender-swap they’d swap the gender of the (I’m guessing male) reader, not of _la novela_\*. - Yes, the same object can have multiple names with different genders 🙂 It’s gender, not sex. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2018, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-masculine-and-feminine-words-in-spanish/806154/24 "2018-01-11T23:00:03Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > It might be mentioned that different senses of the same word may differ in gender. My favorite is that “la papa” is “the potato,” while “el papa” is the Pope. So Schrödinger’s _papa_, in the absence of any gender markers, can only be translated “popetato.” ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2018, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-masculine-and-feminine-words-in-spanish/806154/25 "2018-01-12T02:52:20Z")
> [@Turble](#): > > I remember the first time I (partially) got such a joke when I was first learning Spanish. I was watching an old comedy movie on TV in Mexico – there was a large copy of the Mona Lisa on a wall and suddenly the person in the picture stood up and walked out of the painting and turned out to be a man. One of the characters said “No es Mona Lisa. Es Mono Liso.” > > I got the a/o thing but the friend I was watching with explained that mono (monkey) is also used to mean an imitator as in ‘monkey see, monkey do’. It also means “smooth monkey.” Not sure if that was meant to be part of the joke, but it sounded to me like it was. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-masculine-and-feminine-words-in-spanish/806154.md?page=1)