Epicenity is the lack of gender distinction, often reducing the emphasis on the masculine to allow the feminine.
[2] In languages with grammatical gender, the term epicene can be used in two distinct situations:[2] 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).
In the Spanish language, there are very few cases where a noun ignores the semantic gender of the referent.
For example, the noun persona 'person' is grammatically feminine, and only takes any supporting article or adjective in agreement with this gender.