Grammatical gender made nature feminine across European languages

Evidence

In both Western and non-Western cultures, nature was traditionally feminine. In Latin and the romance languages of medieval and early modern Europe, nature was a feminine noun, and hence, like the virtues (temperance, wisdom, etc.), personified as female. (Latin: natura, -ae; German: die Natur; French: la nature; Italian: la natura; Spanish: la natura.) The Greek word physis was also feminine. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 71

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly supports the ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ article’s interest in how language and moral categories encode gender — this is the mirror case of femaleness coded structurally into nouns.
• CANDY: That nature is feminine partly because of Latin noun gender — natura, die Natur, la nature — is a light conversational fact.
• XREF: connects to: The human concept carries masculine bias because gender and nature dualisms intertwine — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 140; Grammatical gender assignment is arbitrary yet skews feminine for abstractions; Modern scientific language still encodes the sexualized coercion of nature — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 682 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Grammatical gender assignment is arbitrary yet skews feminine for abstractions #expands (0.82)
• Modern scientific language still encodes the sexualized coercion of nature #complicates (0.78) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 682
• Premodern Europeans personified nature as a female being of many guises #complicates (0.75) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 70