Free French Gender Checker: Le or La
This French gender checker tells you whether a noun is masculine or feminine. Type one noun or paste a list of up to 100, and each word shows le or la, un or une, the plural (les chevaux) and the meaning in English. Where the article shortens to l', the un or une still gives the gender away: l'arbre, un arbre. It knows 50,662 nouns, and when a word isn't one of them, it makes a guess and marks it as one. One click copies the whole list with its articles. It's free and needs no signup.
How the French gender checker works
Type a French noun into the box, or paste a list of up to 100. Put commas or new lines between the nouns. A short phrase such as pomme de terre is checked as one noun, so you can paste it as it stands. If a noun has an article in front, the checker ignores the article and looks up the noun. Type la arbre and you get le, written l'arbre.
Each noun comes back with le or la, un or une, its plural and its meaning in English. For cheval, that's le cheval, un cheval and les chevaux. Where le or la shortens to l', the checker shows that form as well, as in l'arbre. When the list is done, one click copies all of it with the articles in place.
Nouns with two genders or two meanings
Some French nouns change their meaning with their gender, and the checker shows both. Le livre is a book and la livre is a pound. Le tour is a turn or a trip, and la tour is a tower. Le poste is a job and la poste is the post office. Others to watch for are la mode "fashion" and le mode "way", la manche "sleeve" and le manche "handle", and le voile "veil" and la voile "sail".
A noun can also take either gender with the same meaning, as in un or une après-midi, and the checker gives both. Of the one-word nouns in the dictionary, 273 work that way.
Accents, plurals, l' and the aspirated h
You don't need a French keyboard. Type eleve and the checker finds élève, and coeur finds cœur. When you leave the accents out, the checker also shows any word that's spelled the same without them. Foret is le foret, a drill bit, and the checker adds la forêt, a forest. Marche is la marche, and it adds le marché, a market.
Plurals work too. Type chevaux and you get le cheval, and yeux gives l'œil. Every plural takes les, so a plural pasted straight from a text never shows the gender on its own. Nouns used only in the plural still get a gender: les vacances is feminine and les gens masculine.
Le and la shorten to l' before a vowel or a mute h, which hides the gender, so the checker shows un or une beside each noun. An aspirated h works the other way. Le héros, la haine and le hasard keep le or la and never take l', and the checker writes them that way.
Words that aren't in the dictionary
A word the dictionary doesn't have can still get an answer. If its ending points firmly to one gender, the checker gives that gender and marks the answer as a guess, so you know to check it. It also tells you how often the rule holds. An unknown word ending in -tion gets la, because 2,290 of the 2,307 nouns ending in -tion in the dictionary are feminine. The French noun gender rules guide lists the ending rules with their counts and the exceptions worth learning.
Where the genders come from
The dictionary holds 50,662 French nouns from English Wiktionary, through kaikki.org. Of the one-word nouns with one gender, 22,428 are masculine and 17,923 feminine. So masculine is the more common, at about 56 nouns in 100, which makes le a slightly better guess than la and still a poor one on its own.
Some nouns follow the person meant. A pupil is un élève if he's a boy and une élève if she's a girl, and 1,814 one-word nouns in the dictionary work that way. Where a person noun has a feminine form of its own, the checker shows it: acteur, feminine actrice. That's the word to use when the person is a woman.
A French gender checker for vocabulary lists
The tool works as a French word gender checker for a single noun, but it's made for lists: a gender lookup for up to 100 nouns at once. Paste the nouns from a textbook chapter, or from a text you're reading, and one click copies them back with their articles, ready for flashcards or a vocabulary sheet. Where l' hides the gender, the copy marks it, as in l'arbre (m), so you won't have to look the noun up twice.
To practice the genders, the French gender quiz tests you on 2,467 everyday nouns and shows the rule behind each answer where there is one. To see which endings decide le or la, and which nouns break each rule, read the French noun gender rules. For the verbs in the same lesson, the French verb conjugation worksheets print fill-in boxes with an answer key. If you teach more than one language, the der die das checker and the Spanish gender checker work the same way for der, die or das and el or la, and the Italian article checker gives il, lo, la or l'.
Frequently asked questions
Is this French gender checker free?
Yes. There's no account and no email address, and nothing to install.
How many words can I check at once?
You can check up to 100. Put commas or new lines between them. A short phrase such as pomme de terre is checked as one noun. If a word has an article in front, such as la arbre, the article is ignored and the checker shows the right one: le, written l'arbre.
Do I need to type accents?
No. Eleve finds élève, and coeur finds cœur. If the word without accents is a different word too, you see both: foret is le foret, a drill bit, and the checker adds la forêt, a forest.
What if I type a plural?
The checker finds the singular and its gender. Type chevaux and it gives le cheval, and yeux gives l'œil. Every French plural takes les, so the plural itself never shows the gender. Nouns used only in the plural still get a gender: les vacances is feminine and les gens masculine.
Why does a word show two articles?
There are three reasons. Some nouns change their meaning with their gender: le livre is a book and la livre is a pound. Some take either gender with the same meaning, such as un or une après-midi. And some follow the person meant, such as un élève for a boy and une élève for a girl.
Why does the checker show un or une?
Because le and la both become l' before a vowel or a mute h, and l' hides the gender: l'arbre, l'heure. Un arbre and une heure show it, so they're the forms to learn. A noun with an aspirated h, such as le héros or la haine, keeps le or la and never takes l'.
What if a word isn't in the dictionary?
If its ending points firmly to one gender, the checker gives that gender and marks it as a guess. It also says how often the rule holds: an unknown word in -tion gets la, because 2,290 of the 2,307 nouns ending in -tion in the dictionary are feminine.
Is my text sent anywhere?
The page sends each word on its own, never the text it came from, and nothing is stored.
Licenses and credits
French nouns, genders and plurals come from English Wiktionary through kaikki.org (CC BY-SA 4.0).