plural. In conversation, however, singular is not uncommonly extended to meanings such as "a parent" when a speaker either doesn't know or doesn't wish to reveal the gender of the noun. Many gender-reform proposals would make such usage official. People who use for "father" may avoid the unaffixed noun "*parent" altogether as ambiguous, or may use it and switch to only when they need to disambiguate. Treatment of gendered words Many of these proposals propose that all gender-changing words such as become neutral once a masculine suffix is in use, with the only remaining gendered words being those such as and that never changed gender to begin with. However, since has numerous masculine uses, and there are already dedicated words for the neutral and feminine equivalents ( "adult" or "grownup", and "woman"), is also commonly retained as a masculine root. The word "eunuch" has through back-formation given rise to the suffix for castrated people or animals, creating forms such as "steer", from "cattle", to replace "steer", though "ex-" is sometimes seen in this context: "castrated cat" (lit. "ex-male-cat") vs. . Gender-neutral pronouns As in English, Esperanto has a personal pronoun for "he", , and "she", . Paraphrasing "he or she" to avoid mentioning gender is, as in English, considered awkward, exclusive, and is avoided in conversation and literature. There are two general approaches to resolving this issue: modifying an existing pronoun, and creating a new pronoun. Extending the range of an existing pronoun The existing third-person pronouns are "he" (the pronoun traditionally used when gender is not known), "she", "it", "they", "one", (reflexive), "that one". is used principally with animals and objects. Zamenhof also prescribed it to be the epicene pronoun for people when the gender of an individual is unknown, saying it was "completely correct grammatically". He most often used it for children, but also for adults with known gender: "the child is crying, because it wants to eat". "They are the lord of our place, lord viscount of ..." The idea that cannot be used for people is due to its use as a neuter pronoun. In Zamenhof's day it was customary to specify gender whenever it was known . A shift from and to would thus be a stylistic extension similar to the ongoing shift from copula-plus-adjective to verb (such as for ), and nothing so radical as the creation of a new pronoun would be required.