§34. General Rules of Gender
Many nouns may be either masculine or feminine, according to the sex of the object. These are said to be of Common Gender: as, exsul, exile; bōs, ox or cow; parēns, parent.
J. H. Allen and J. B. Greenough, New Latin Grammar (Boston: Ginn, 1903). Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.