neuter• What is to be understood as female is something vague; indeed the Spirit is often designated as neuter.• Masculine, feminine and neuter are labels for formalproperties and have nothing to do with what a word actually means.• Neither did I feel male, but rather neuter, as a child might feel itself to be neuter.• Paramour comes to mind, but that is a neuter term.
2to remove power from something or to stop something from being effective – used to show disapproval 使失去作用,使丧失效力〔含贬义〕
Plans to reform local government are designed to neuter local democracy.
改革地方政府的计划旨在压制地方民主。
Examples from the Corpus
neuter• If the source can not be located or suppressed, then at least its effect can be neutered.• The asterisk, to my mind, was emblematic of the neutering of IronMike.• Spaying and neutering pets is the easiest way to cure that problem.• He would keep it by neutering Steve Jobs.• I think it was the neutering that made us equal, even in the eyes of our professors.• If she had neutered the quick of mystery in platitude before, she was smothering it with symbols now.• The better way to handle the situation is to render the cats infertile without actually neutering them.• If they're neutered they don't smell.
Originneuter1
(1300-1400)Latin“neither”, from ne-“not” + uter“which of two”