I've just come across a very strange phrase:
Parliament internationally surrendered HER sovereignty to the primacy of European Community law.
My question has nothing to do with politics! I just want to understand why the parliament is called "she". Is it an old-fashioned form?
Regular form of expression.
Boats, naval ships, liberty, government, prizes, booty (gold) are commonly referred to as feminine.
Most languages usually 'assign' a masculine and feminine to nouns. Latin languages come to mind very quickly for this.
The origin of this I am not certain but I am sure a quick google search could answer this. Traditional story telling, myths, legends are possibly the most significant reason.
Example: Athena the goddess of strategic warfare. -> Strategy is/can be referred to as feminine.
EDIT: I couldn't find anything specific on the origin of the gender for paliament in particular. Here is an article from Princeton on the subject as a whole.
In many languages, every noun has a gender. Things that do not have any literal gender are assigned a gender that made sense to whoever invented the word.
English does not have gender, at least not as an explicit part of the language, like different endings on a noun for different genders. Nevertheless, English-speakers do sometimes still assign gender to inanimate objects, institutions, etc, for purposes of using pronouns. I think for the most part this has become obsolete. Inanimate objects, etc, are now almost always referred to as "it". Perhaps the last hold-out is boats and ships, which are still fairly often called "she".
Some people call any vehicle -- car, plane, train, etc -- "she". Older documents and some traditionalists will call a nation or a government "she", as here. It's pretty rare these days, I think, but not unheard of.
