How to Know Le or La: French Noun Gender Rules

Masculine is the more common gender there. Of the one-word nouns with one gender, 22,428 are masculine and 17,923 feminine, so about 56 in 100 are masculine. Another 273 take either gender with the same meaning, such as un or une après-midi, and 1,814 follow the person meant, such as un élève for a boy and une élève for a girl. Every ending count in this guide is of one-word nouns with one gender, and a noun counts under its longest ending, so question counts under -tion, not under -on. To look up a single noun, or a list of them, use the French gender checker.

Feminine endings that take la

Seventeen endings point to la. One of them, -trice, holds for every noun in our dictionary that has it, and -euse and -tion come close. Even the weakest of the seventeen, -ine, holds 961 times out of 1,066, about 9 in 10. The table shows each feminine ending with an example and how often it holds: how many of the nouns with that ending are feminine, out of all the nouns in our dictionary that end that way.

The everyday exceptions are worth learning by name. Le musée, le lycée and le trophée end in -ée but take le. So do l'été (m), le côté, le comité, le traité and le pâté, which end in -té. For -ie there are le génie, l'incendie (m) and le parapluie, and for -ence, -ière and -ade there are le silence, le cimetière and le stade.

Masculine endings that take le

Twenty-one endings point to le. Three of them, -eil, -ent and -ard, hold for every noun in our dictionary that has them, and -ant, -ment and -isme come close. Each of the twenty-one holds at least 9 times in 10. The table shows each masculine ending with an example and how often it holds: how many of the nouns with that ending take le, out of all the nouns that end that way.

Two endings have exceptions you'll meet early. Nouns in -age are masculine 1,099 times out of 1,127, yet la page, la plage, l'image (f), la cage, la nage and la rage are feminine. The -eur ending holds 1,837 times out of 1,928. People and machines in -eur take le, as in l'acteur (m) and l'ordinateur (m), but the everyday exceptions are feminine abstract nouns, such as la couleur, la douleur, la valeur, l'odeur (f), l'erreur (f) and la peur, plus la fleur.

Other endings have a few to learn: la crème for -ème, la main and la fin for -in, and la clé, la moitié, l'amitié (f) and la pitié for -é.

Three endings look alike. Nouns in -té and -ée take la, and other nouns in -é take le, so it's la liberté and l'idée (f), but le café. La moitié, l'amitié and la pitié end in -ié, not -té, which makes them exceptions to the -é rule.

The counts take only nouns with at least two letters before the ending, so a few short words fall outside them. La dent is one: it ends in -ent and is feminine, so learn it with the exceptions above.

Endings that hold most of the time: -ure, -on and -o

Three endings you'll see in textbooks hold most of the time, but not often enough to bet on. Treat them as first guesses.

Most nouns ending in -ure are feminine: 408 of the 569, about 72 percent. That's the weakest of the three, so check any -ure noun you haven't met before.

Most nouns ending in -on are masculine: 865 of the 978, about 88 percent. The exceptions include everyday nouns: la maison, la raison, la façon, la prison, la chanson, la réunion, la leçon and la saison. The count leaves out nouns in -tion and -sion, which have rules of their own and take la.

Most nouns ending in -o are masculine: 440 of the 511, about 86 percent. The everyday exceptions include la photo, la vidéo, la radio, la moto, la météo, l'info (f) and l'auto (f). Most of them are short for a longer feminine word, as la photo is for la photographie, la moto for la motocyclette and l'auto for l'automobile.

Does -e mean feminine?

A final -e doesn't make a noun feminine, though you may have read that it does. Of all the nouns in our dictionary that end in -e, 13,086 are feminine and 8,118 masculine, so about 62 in 100 are feminine. That lean comes from the -e endings that have rules of their own, such as -ette, -ance and -ure for la, and -isme, -age and -ème for le.

Take those out, and the nouns left split evenly: 5,124 feminine and 5,121 masculine. So a bare -e tells you nothing. Le livre and la livre end in the same -e, and so do le voile and la voile.

Rules that go by meaning

Some rules go by what a noun means instead of how it ends. These are the rules textbooks teach.

• Days, months and seasons are masculine: le lundi, le printemps, l'été. Months usually go without an article, as in le mois de mai, but they're masculine too.
• Languages are masculine: le français.
• Trees and metals are masculine: le chêne, le fer.
• Most countries ending in -e are feminine: la France. Le Mexique and le Cambodge are exceptions.
• A shortened word keeps the gender of the full word: la photo, from la photographie, and la moto, from la motocyclette.

The shortened words explain most of the -o exceptions above. La photo is feminine because la photographie is, whatever its ending says.

How l' hides the gender

Le and la both become l' before a vowel or a mute h, so l'arbre and l'heure don't show their gender. L'arbre is masculine and l'heure is feminine, and nothing in the article tells you which. Learn nouns like these with un or une instead: un arbre, une heure.

An aspirated h works the other way. Le héros, la haine, le hasard, la honte and le haricot keep le or la and never take l'. Learn these with their article, since the spelling alone won't tell you which kind of h a word has.

Every plural takes les, whatever the gender: les arbres, les heures. So the plural never shows the gender either, and a noun you first met in the plural is worth checking before it goes on a flashcard.

How to learn French noun genders

Use the rules where they hold, and learn the rest with the article attached.

1. Learn every noun with its article. Put le livre on the flashcard, not livre, and un arbre where l' hides the gender. Every plural takes les, so the plural can't tell you the gender later.
2. Start with the endings that almost never miss. That's -trice, -euse, -tion and -sion for la, and -ment, -isme and -age for le, along with la page and la plage. Add -té, -ée and -ie next, with le musée and l'été.
3. Treat -ure, -on and -o as first guesses. Guess la for -ure and le for -on and -o, and learn the everyday exceptions as you meet them: la maison, la leçon, la photo.
4. Don't read anything into a bare -e. Once the endings with rules are taken out, nouns in -e split evenly between le and la.
5. Learn the rest one by one. Le livre and la honte match none of the rules in this guide, so they're learned with their article or not at all.

To practice, the French gender quiz asks for the genders of 2,467 everyday nouns, and its endings set takes only the nouns with an ending rule, along with their exceptions. After each answer it shows the rule, where there is one, and how often it holds. To look up a noun, or a list of 100, the French gender checker gives the article, the plural and the meaning, and copies the whole list with its articles for your flashcards. Run the endings set a few times, and the exceptions become the nouns you know best.

Frequently asked questions

Licenses and credits

French nouns, genders and plurals come from English Wiktionary through kaikki.org (CC BY-SA 4.0).