On history of modern genetic terminology: What is a proper gender of term “allele”?

Abstract

In modern Russian scientific literature, one may find usage of term “allele” in both masculine and feminine grammatical gender. Existence of “proper” usage is debatable and hence became a topic of the given paper. History of term in Russian language and grammatical bases of its gender are briefly reviewed. Basing on statistics of usage of this word in Russian genetic journals, one may conclude that its usage in feminine gender tends to decline and is attributed almost exclusively to Leningrad and Saint-Petersburg scientific schools. The word “allele” in feminine gender more suits the existing tradition of interlingual transition of words ending with «-el». Nevertheless, the modern Russian genetic literature obviously prefers using this term in masculine gender.