gender-neutral words we lack in English

[fox]

So it's interesting to me that although we mostly don't have grammatical gender in English, we do have some words with inherent gender but no neutral alternative (which other gendered words do have). Viz:

mother, father, parent
sister, brother, sibling
daughter, son, child

But:

niece, nephew, _____
aunt, uncle, _____

And, interestingly, _____, _____, cousin.

I wonder why we can have gender-neutral terms for the immediate family but not for the slightly extended one. Bit of a drag.

I was going to use animal terms here, too, which is also interesting:
mare, stallion, horse
filly, colt, foal
cow, bull, _____ (cattle, sure, but that's a mass rather than a count noun; you can't specify one gender-neutral adult animal, and maybe not juveniles either - is it heifer, calf, _____ or heifer, _____, calf?)
ewe, ram, sheep
_____, _____, lamb
?nanny, billy, goat? (can you say "a nanny" or does it have to be "a nanny goat"?)
_____, _____, kid
?bitch, dog, _____? (rarely used anymore, of course, and/so people would probably correct me to bitch, _____, dog if they're prepared to use "bitch" in the canine sense at all)
_____, _____, pup
_____, _____, wolf
?vixen, _____, fox?
?_____, tom, cat?
_____, _____, kitten
hen, cock, bird/fowl (is this true of all birds and just generally not used for most of the little flying ones?)
_____, _____, chick
?jenny, mule, _____? (or jenny, ____, mule?)
sow, hog, pig
_____, _____, piglet
... we don't give a shit about the genders of fish, do we.

Comments

[ellen_fremedon]

To expand your chart:

Mare, stallion / gelding, horse; filly, colt, foal; _____; stud

Cow / freemartin, bull / (ox), ____/cattle; heifer, bullock / steer, calf; beef / veal, herd

(You are correct that there's no singular. In some regions 'beast' is used); An ox is always castrated if male, but the term refers to the work done and not to the animal's sex. Freemartins are sterile cows masculinized in the womb by twin brothers, which can be used for draft.)

Ewe, ram / wether, sheep; ___, ____, lamb; mutton; flock.

(The bellwether was originally the senior male of a flock. The presence of full-grown wethers, whose horn development differs from that of intact rams, is the main archaeological marker of a wool industry. If you're raising sheep for meat you'll slaughter both sexes as yearlings or younger, and if you're raising them for milk the ewes will be slaughtered very old and the males very young; wethers are only good for wool.)

Nanny-goat, billy-goat, goat; ____, ____, kid; chevon; herd, flock, sometimes trip or tribe.

Bitch, dog, dog; ____, ____, puppy or whelp; _____; pack.

Jenny, jack, ass or donkey; young animals as for horse, mules same as for donkeys.

Sow, boar / barrow / pig, hog / swine; gilt, ____, piglet or farrow or shoat; pork; drift or drove.
(Yeah, pigs get complicated. Technically, 'pig' is the missing word for a young male animal and the non-sex-specific term is hog or swine; one of my favorite corrections ever issued by any media outlet was the Australian Broadcasting Corporation clarifying that in a news report on a flash flood, they meant to say that thirty sows and pigs, not thirty thousand pigs, were floating down the river. The terms for young animals divide the juveniles more by age than by sex--farrows are nursing, shoats have been weaned, piglets can refer to any young animal, and gilts are females that haven't been bred yet.)

Hen, cock or rooster / capon, chicken / fowl; pullet, cockerel, chick; ___; flock.