Epicenity is the lack of gender distinction, often reducing the emphasis on the masculine to allow the feminine. It includes androgyny – having both masculine and feminine characteristics. The adjective gender-neutral may describe epicenity (and both terms are associated with the terms gender-neutral language, gender-neutral pronouns, gender-blind, and unisex).

An epicene word has the same form for male and for female referents. In some cases, the term common gender is also used,^{[citation needed]} but should not be confused with common or appellative as a contrary to proper (as in proper noun). In English, for example, the epicene (or common) nouns cousin and violinist can refer to a man or a woman, and so can the epicene (or common) pronoun one. The noun stewardess and the third-person singular pronoun she on the other hand are not epicene (or common).

In languages with grammatical gender, the term epicene can be used in two distinct situations:

In the French language, the noun élève 'schoolchild' and the adjective espiègle 'mischievous' can be either masculine or feminine, but they are differentiated by the article:

The same can happen in French with the epicene elided singular articles (l'), the definite (les) and indefinite (des) plural articles, and the contractions aux (à + les) and des (de + les) when in contact with the noun, so the adjective takes the task of marking the gender:

For these meanings the term common is also used.

However, there can be cases where the agreement cannot force the disambiguation, even with the presence of pronoun, article, noun and adjective when they are all epicene:

This can be further complicated when dealing with spoken French (when some orthographical nuances are lost).