Spol and Rod from a Diachronic and Synchronic Perspective

Abstract

The paper presents the diachronic and synchronic analysis of the use of Croatian words spol and rod and their Croatian Church Slavonic (polь, spolь, and rodь) and English (sex and gender) equivalents. The starting points for diachronic analysis are dictionaries and dictionary data, while the synchronic analysis is additionally based on the corpora and the Internet. The paper focuses on dictionary definitions of nouns rod and spol, adjectives rodni and spolni, the relation of Croatian terms rod and spol with English terms gender and sex, the terminology of sex/gender (non)discrimination, and ways of speaking about persons of non-binary gender.