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How to easily guess the

gender of French nouns
with 80% accuracy
Alysa Salzberg French Grammar
Updated on March 20, 2023

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French nouns are either masculine or

feminine. Masculine nouns use the pronouns
le and un while feminine nouns use la and
une.

You may have heard that there is only one

way to know the gender of a noun: to learn it
by heart. Luckily this is one of many myths
about the French language. You can actually
know the gender of a French noun with more
than 80% accuracy just by looking at its
ending.

Let’s explore why genders exist in the French

language, why they’re important, and how
you can finally be sure whether a noun is
masculine or feminine.

Table of Contents
Why are there feminine and masculine nouns
in French?
Why French genders matter
The 80/20 of French gender rules (or how to
easily know whether a word is masculine or
feminine)
Other ways to learn and remember the gender
of French words
How to learn and practice French noun gender
French gender rules explained
Have feminism and the gender equality
movement had an effect on the French noun
genders?

Why are there

feminine and
masculine nouns in
French?

French isn’t the only language whose nouns

have genders, and masculine and feminine
aren’t the only possible genders for nouns in
certain other languages. For example, in
German, there’s a third gender: neuter. Many
languages group nouns by whether they’re
animate or inanimate. “Gender” is still the
term used for this kind of classification,
though.

Interestingly, while we tend to think of English

as a language without genders, that’s not
completely true. Although English nouns may
not be gendered, people and their
corresponding pronouns are. Some other
languages, like Turkish and Basque, don’t
designate gender at all.

Why do some languages have gendered

nouns, while others don’t? No matter how
much research you do or how many
linguistics classes you take in college (trust
me), you’ll never get a definitive answer to
this. From what we know about ancient texts
and fragments of words, as well as by trying
to reconstruct primitive languages based on
modern-day language families, it seems that
humans began by classifying nouns as living
or not living. This may have had practical, as
well as religious, purposes.

It’s thought that as time went on and religion

became more organized and, in most places,
less animistic, gender seemed like a good
way to keep nouns organized. Why
organizing nouns into general groups seemed
necessary, and why certain nouns that would
seem inherently masculine or feminine fall
into the completely opposite category, is still
uncertain.

So, yes, this does all mean that French noun

genders are completely arbitrary in many
cases. You can vent your frustration with a
scream if you’d like, or maybe a French swear
word.

Why French genders

matter
Regardless of their unclear and arbitrary
origin, you can’t master French if you don’t
master French genders.

In French, gender has an influence on:

The article you use before a noun

Pronouns
The ending of adjectives and verbs
The meaning of certain words

You’ll discover how genders influence these

elements in the last section of this article. But
before you do, here’s how to easily know the
gender of French words.

The 80/20 of French

gender rules (or how
to easily know
whether a word is
masculine or
feminine)

No need to purchase a magic mirror to guess the gender of

French words.

There are many approaches to learning the

genders of French nouns. But I’ve got news for
you: Even native French speakers occasionally
have trouble with it! In a 2008 study , native
French speakers were asked to determine the
gender of 93 words (which it turns out were
all masculine). They could only agree on the
gender of 17 of those! And they had even
more trouble when it came to a list of
feminine words.

Fortunately, there are methods that you can

use to learn, memorize, and guess whether a
French noun is masculine or feminine. Choose
the right one for you and you’ll get them right
a vast majority of the time.

The method that’s been shown to be the

most effective is….

Guess the gender based

on the word’s ending
According to a study by McGill University
(PDF), a noun’s ending indicates its gender in
80% of cases . Based on this study, here is a
list of typically masculine and typically
feminine noun endings.

Nouns with these endings were found to be of

the same gender in more than 90% of cases.

Unless you really like memorizing lists, I don’t

recommend you learn these endings by heart,
since the process would be extremely boring.
Instead, bookmark this page and regularly
look at the list. Or print it out and hang it
somewhere you often linger – for example,
beside your bathroom mirror, by the sink
where you wash the dishes, or even by your
toilet.

After a while, you’ll see that you can intuitively

guess the gender of a noun based on its
ending.

French Together founder and genuinely nice

guy Benjamin Houy has created a simplified
list that’s easier to remember. You’ll find it
below this first list.

Typically masculine
noun endings (+90%)
-an, -and, -ant, -ent, -in, -int, -om, -
ond, -ont, -on (but not after s/c¸)
-eau, -au, -aud, -aut, -o, -os, -ot
-ai, -ais, -ait, -es, -et
-ou, -out, -out, -oux
-i, -il, -it, -is, -y
-at, -as, -ois, -oit
• -u, -us, -ut, -eu
-er, -é after C (C=t)
-age, -ege, – ème, -ome, -aume, -
isme
-as, -is, -os, -us, -ex
-it, -est
-al, -el, -il, -ol, -eul, -all
-if, -ef
-ac, -ic, -oc, -uc
-am, -um, -en
-air, -er, -erf, -ert, -ar, -arc, -ars, -
art, -our, -ours, -or, -ord, -ors, -ort, -
ir, -oir, -eur
(if animate)
-ail, -eil, -euil, -ueil
-ing

Typically feminine
noun endings (+90%)
-aie, -oue, -eue, -ion, -te, – ée, -ie, -
ue
-asse, -ace, -esse, -ece, -aisse, -isse/-
ice, -ousse, -ance, -anse, -ence, -once
-enne, -onne, -une, -ine, -aine, -
eine, -erne
-ande, -ende, -onde, -ade, -ude, -
arde, -orde
-euse, -ouse, -ase, -aise, -ese, -oise, -
ise, -yse, -ose, -use
-ache, -iche, -eche, -oche, -uche, -
ouche, -anche
-ave, -eve, -ive
-iere, -ure, -eure
-ette, -ete, – ête, -atte, -otte, -oute, -
orte, -ante, -ente, -inte, -onte
-alle, -elle, -ille, -olle
-aille, -eille, -ouille
-appe, -ampe, -ombe
• -igue

A simplified list of
endings
The previous list has the advantage of being
exhaustive, but as French Together reader
Amosnliz notes in the comment section, you
can learn with a simplified, shorter list.

While there is no precise data available, you

can consider that you’ll be right 80% of the
time if you use this simplified list.

Feminine noun endings

The majority of words that end in -e or
-ion.
Except words ending in -age, -ege, -é,
or -isme (these endings often indicate
masculine words).

Masculine noun endings

Most words with other endings are masculine.

Other ways to learn

and remember the
gender of French
words

Memorizing words along with an article is a very easy way

to ingrain in your memory if a word is masculine or
feminine.

When it comes to learning genders in French,

I feel like I’m living proof of what the McGill
study found. My French teachers in school
made us memorize endings that are typically
masculine or feminine, and that has
continued to help me through my years of
learning French and becoming fluent.

But maybe this method doesn’t work for you.

You might not be good at or like to memorize
long lists, or you may find it easier to
memorize things in a different, less
straightforward way. Luckily, there are many
other strategies you can use to memorize
genders in French. Some of the most popular
are:

Memorize new French

words with an article
You’ve probably come across lists of French
vocabulary with a definite or indefinite article
in front of each word. Although French people
don’t use articles every single time they say a
word, memorizing words along with an article
is a very easy way to ingrain in your memory
if a word is masculine and feminine. And as
you start memorizing words this way, you
may notice that certain types of words tend to
be one gender or another, which will give you
more of a chance of guessing, if you ever
have to. Personally, although the endings
method is the one I’ve found the most useful,
I’ve always tried to memorize vocabulary with
an article, as well.

Memorize categories of
words that are typically
masculine or feminine
Although learning word endings that tend to
be masculine or feminine is a more all-
encompassing method, learning categories
that are commonly masculine or feminine can
be pretty helpful, too. Of course, not
everything can be neatly put into a category
that has all or mostly masculine or feminine
nouns, but there are a decent amount of
categories out there, and maybe, as you learn
French, you’ll notice patterns and come up
with categories that make sense and work for
you, in addition to the established ones.

Remember that if a word in a particular

category has another meaning, the gender of
that second meaning probably won’t be the
same (we’ll talk more about this a little later
on). So, for example, orange is masculine
when it’s a color and feminine when it’s a
fruit.

Here are some categories of French words

that are typically masculine:

wines
cheeses (although there are some
exceptions, usually involving the
description of the form of the cheese,
for example, la tomme, une brique)
colors
metric units
numbers (note that the numeric
concept that ends in -aine (=about
this much, this decade of a person’s
life, is feminine (la quarantaine, une
cinquaiantaine de personnes))
metals
languages
trees
days of the week
seasons
months

Here are some categories of French words

that are typically feminine:

brand names of cars

brand names of watches
names of rivers
sciences and other domains of
learning (la science, l’histoire, la
chimie, etc.). Le droit (the law) is one
notable exception to this rule.

For more details about these categories, you

can have a look at this list or this one, which
includes links to two French podcasts about
how to tell what gender a word is.

As you can see, these categories don’t cover

every subject in the French language, so this
method should be used with another one to
be able to guess a word’s gender with
accuracy. But it can be a very helpful way to
quickly guess the gender of words that do fall
into these categories, or if you’re working with
these categories (say, talking about the colors
of a painting), you’ll know you can keep the
gender the same.

Pay attention when you watch, read, and

listen to French

This is another strategy that has helped me

quite a bit. If you hear or see a word with its
article enough, or hear/see it used with
adjectives, you’ll become accustomed to it
being associated with a gender.

For instance, I used to babysit a little French

boy who loved to sing the French lullaby “Au
Clair de la lune”. I quickly picked it up, and
we’d sing it every afternoon. I got used to
associating the nouns in the song with the
words around them that signified their
gender. For example, la lune, ta plume, un
mot, ta porte.

It’s been years since I babysat that little boy,

and years since I’ve been speaking French, so
when I say or write those words today, the
song doesn’t necessarily come to mind, but
there was a time when it did for some of
them!

So, if you like music, poetry, books, movies, TV

series – just about anything that can let you
hear/see and become familiar with French
words in situ, this is a great way to
supplement your French word gender
knowledge.

Associate each gender

with a vivid image
If none of these other strategies speak to you,
here’s another that’s often recommended:
Instead of simply learning each word and its
gender by heart, it can be smart
to associate each gender with an action in
your mind.

You could imagine, for example, that

masculine nouns fall into water while
feminine nouns are eaten by a monster.
Associating each noun with such a vivid
image helps you remember its gender more
easily.

The association needs to be personal, since

it has to be something you will easily
remember. For example, If you love to sing,
you could sing each word with a different
tone depending on its gender.

How to learn and

practice French noun
gender
One easy way to keep up what you’ve
learned about genders in French is to choose
a word, guess if it’s masculine or feminine,
then look it up online or in a print dictionary to
check if you’re right. If you’re not, try saying or
writing the word with its masculine or
feminine article a few times. You may also
want to check if it belongs on the list of
typically masculine or feminine word endings.

Want more practice, or different ways to

practice? This article includes a great list of
French word gender games you can play on
your own or with a group.

French gender rules

explained

Now you know how to identify the gender of

French nouns. Now let’s see why knowing the
gender of French words is so important.

Here are the most important grammatical

elements in French that change based on
genders.

Articles
In French, you have a masculine “the” (le) and
a feminine “the” (la). Good news – there’s a
plural “the” (les), but it stays the same for
groups/things of either gender.

Similarly, you have a masculine “a” (un) and a

feminine “a” (une). Another bit of good news:
As with les, the plural form of “a” in French,
des, stays the same whether you’re using it
with masculine or feminine nouns.

Finally, while you say “some”, as in “a

portion/piece of”, you need to make the
distinction between du (masculine) and de la
(feminine) in French.

Pronouns
As in English, pronouns change depending on
the subject’s gender.

he = il

she = elle

Note that these pronouns aren’t just used with

people, but with any noun, since they all have
genders. For example: Nadine est si gentille.
Elle m’a prêté sa voiture pour la journée.
(Nadine is so kind. She let me borrow her car
for the day.) OR J’en ai marre de cette chaise
! Elle n’est vraiment pas confortable. (I’m sick
of this chair ! It’s really uncomfortable!)

Unlike English, there are two ways to say

“they” in French:

elles (feminine subject)

ils (masculine subject)