Which noun endings are feminine in French?

The most dependable are -tion, -sion, -té, -ance, -ence, -ure, -ette, -elle, -esse, -ie, -ée, -aison and abstract -eur. So la question, la beauté, la patience, la peinture and la couleur are all feminine, and so is any new word built with those endings.

What are the exceptions to the feminine endings?

A short, closed list: le silence, le squelette, le musée, le lycée, le trophée, un incendie, le génie, le parapluie, le murmure, le bonheur, le malheur, l'honneur, le côté, l'été, le comité and le traité. Learning them as a group is quicker than meeting them one at a time.

Why is la couleur feminine but le moteur masculine?

The ending -eur splits by meaning. When it names a quality or a sensation it is feminine: la peur, la chaleur, la douleur. When it names an agent or a machine it is masculine: le vendeur, le moteur, l'ordinateur.

How do I tell the gender of a noun starting with a vowel?

The article won't help, because le and la both become l'. Look at an adjective or a past participle instead: l'eau est froide shows feminine, l'hôtel est complet shows masculine. In the plural the article is les either way, so the adjective is still your only clue.

Do the endings work for people and jobs?

Not reliably. Une personne and une victime stay feminine whoever they refer to, and un témoin stays masculine. Job titles are being feminised — une professeure, une autrice — but they follow usage rather than an ending.

French grammar · Beginner

Feminine Noun Endings in French: The Patterns and Their Exceptions

Written by Camille Laurent, Lead French Curriculum Editor · Reviewed May 2026

French gender is not random once you look at the end of the word. Around twenty endings — among them -tion, -té, -ance, -ure, -ette, -esse and -aison — make a noun feminine almost every time. Each of those endings comes with a short list of exceptions, and those exceptions are worth learning as a set because they are the words you will meet most often.

La liberté, la nation et la culture sont toutes féminines.

Liberté, nation and culture are all feminine.

What it is

Most French noun endings are old suffixes that were attached to a stem centuries ago, and a suffix carries a fixed gender wherever it goes. That is why -tion is feminine in every word that has it, from nation to hésitation. Learning the suffix is learning several thousand words at once.

la situation, la beauté, la patience, la peinture — the situation, beauty, patience, painting.

How to spot it

Read the last three or four letters and ask whether they form a suffix or just happen to be the end of a short root word. Suffixes are dependable; short root words are where the exceptions live.

la décision — the decision (-sion)
la richesse — wealth (-esse)
la nourriture — food (-ure)
la saison — the season (-aison)

None of this tells you anything about people. Un professeur and une personne take their gender from their own history, not from what they describe.

Feminine Noun Endings Quick Reference

Endings that make a noun feminine

Ending	Example	Watch out for
-tion, -sion, -xion	la nation, la version	no everyday exceptions
-té, -tié	la beauté, l'amitié	le côté, l'été, le comité, le traité, le pâté
-ance, -ence	la chance, la patience	le silence
-ure	la voiture, la nature	le murmure
-ette, -elle, -esse	la fourchette, la vaisselle, la vitesse	le squelette
-ie	la vie, la boulangerie	un incendie, le génie, le parapluie
-ée	la journée, la pensée	le musée, le lycée, le trophée
-eur (abstract)	la couleur, la douleur	le bonheur, le malheur, l'honneur
-aison, -ison	la maison, la raison	no everyday exceptions

Common Feminine Noun Endings Examples in French

The main feminine endings, with the words you are most likely to need:

Actions and Processes: -tion, -sion

la question: the question
une explication: an explanation
la télévision: television
une réunion: a meeting
la connexion: the connection

This is the single most reliable group in the language. Every noun built on -tion is feminine, including the borrowed ones like la promotion.

Qualities: -té, -esse, -ance, -ence

la liberté: freedom
la gentillesse: kindness
la connaissance: knowledge
la différence: the difference
la vérité: truth

These four endings turn an adjective into the name of a quality: libre gives liberté, gentil gives gentillesse.

Things and Results: -ure, -ie, -ée

la peinture: the painting, paint
la ceinture: the belt
la pharmacie: the pharmacy
la soirée: the evening
une idée: an idea

The -ée group is the loosest of the three, and it is where the Greek borrowings musée, lycée and trophée break the pattern.

Small Things and Sets: -ette, -elle, -ine, -ade

une cigarette: a cigarette
la poubelle: the bin
la cuisine: the kitchen, cooking
la promenade: the walk
la salade: the salad

-ette started life as a diminutive, which is why so many small objects carry it: une fourchette, une serviette, une allumette.

Why the Endings Work

Understanding where these endings come from explains both why they are so consistent and why the exceptions are always the same handful of words.

A Suffix Carries Its Own Gender

An ending like -tion or -té is not a coincidence of spelling; it is a piece of Latin grammar that arrived with its gender already fixed. Any new word built with it inherits that gender, which is why even recent coinages behave.

la numérisation, la connectivité

digitisation, connectivity

Same suffix, same gender, always.

The Exceptions Are Root Words, Not Suffixed Words

Le côté, l'été and le musée look like they carry a feminine suffix, but they don't: the ending is simply the last part of a short, old word. Nothing was attached to anything, so nothing imposes a gender.

la beauté mais le côté

beauty, but the side

No suffix, no guarantee.

-eur Splits by Meaning

An -eur noun naming a quality or a sensation is feminine: la peur, la chaleur, la couleur. An -eur noun naming someone or something that does a job is masculine: le vendeur, l'ordinateur. The ending is the same; the two words behind it are different.

la douleur, le moteur

pain, the engine

Feeling → feminine, doer → masculine.

The Article Is How the Gender Shows

Gender is invisible in the noun itself. It appears in the article, the adjectives and any past participle nearby, so the practical consequence of getting the ending right is a whole chain of agreements downstream.

Cette longue réunion est enfin terminée.

This long meeting is finally over.

Gender rules everything around the noun.

Learn the Noun with Its Article

Endings get you most of the way, but they don't cover short words like la mer, la fin or la main. Storing une réponse rather than réponse costs nothing at the time and removes the guess later.

une réponse, une erreur, une heure

an answer, a mistake, an hour

Never learn a bare noun.

Common Mistakes with Feminine Noun Endings

Incorrect: le liberté — freedom

Correct: la liberté — freedom

The suffix -té names a quality and is feminine without exception when it is genuinely a suffix. Only root words that happen to end in -té, like côté and été, are masculine.

Incorrect: la musée — the museum

Correct: le musée — the museum

-ée is usually feminine, but musée, lycée, trophée and mausolée came into French from Greek as masculine nouns and stayed that way.

Incorrect: la silence — silence

Correct: le silence — silence

Every other everyday noun in -ence is feminine, which makes le silence the one you have to remember. Compare la patience, la différence, la présence.

Incorrect: la bonheur — happiness

Correct: le bonheur — happiness

Abstract nouns in -eur are normally feminine — la peur, la douleur, la couleur — but bonheur, malheur and honneur are masculine because they are built on heur, an old masculine word for luck.

The Exceptions Worth Memorising

Each of these lists is short and closed. Learning them takes an afternoon and removes most of the remaining guesswork.

Masculine words with a feminine-looking ending

These are the everyday words that break the patterns above. There are not many, and they recur constantly.

le silence: silence (against -ence)
le squelette: the skeleton (against -ette)
le musée: the museum (against -ée)
un incendie: a fire (against -ie)
le bonheur: happiness (against abstract -eur)

Le lycée, le trophée, le génie, le parapluie, le murmure and le stade belong to the same list.

Short feminine words with no helpful ending

Some of the most frequent feminine nouns in French are one syllable long and give you nothing to work from. They have to be learnt with their article.

la main: the hand
la fin: the end
la mer: the sea
la dent: the tooth
la nuit: the night

La main and la fin are the two exceptions to -in, an otherwise dependable masculine ending.

Feminine nouns hidden behind l'

Before a vowel or a mute h, both le and la shrink to l', so the gender vanishes from view. The adjective or the plural article gives it back.

l'eau est froide: the water is cold (feminine)
l'école est fermée: the school is closed (feminine)
l'heure exacte: the exact time (feminine)
l'hôtel est complet: the hotel is full (masculine)

This is why dictionaries print (f) and (m) next to nouns beginning with a vowel: the article cannot tell you.

Feminine Noun Endings FAQs

Which noun endings are feminine in French?: The most dependable are -tion, -sion, -té, -ance, -ence, -ure, -ette, -elle, -esse, -ie, -ée, -aison and abstract -eur. So la question, la beauté, la patience, la peinture and la couleur are all feminine, and so is any new word built with those endings.
What are the exceptions to the feminine endings?: A short, closed list: le silence, le squelette, le musée, le lycée, le trophée, un incendie, le génie, le parapluie, le murmure, le bonheur, le malheur, l'honneur, le côté, l'été, le comité and le traité. Learning them as a group is quicker than meeting them one at a time.
Why is la couleur feminine but le moteur masculine?: The ending -eur splits by meaning. When it names a quality or a sensation it is feminine: la peur, la chaleur, la douleur. When it names an agent or a machine it is masculine: le vendeur, le moteur, l'ordinateur.
How do I tell the gender of a noun starting with a vowel?: The article won't help, because le and la both become l'. Look at an adjective or a past participle instead: l'eau est froide shows feminine, l'hôtel est complet shows masculine. In the plural the article is les either way, so the adjective is still your only clue.
Do the endings work for people and jobs?: Not reliably. Une personne and une victime stay feminine whoever they refer to, and un témoin stays masculine. Job titles are being feminised — une professeure, une autrice — but they follow usage rather than an ending.