Every French noun is either masculine or feminine — and that gender affects the article, every adjective, and every past participle that refers to it. The good news is that most French noun genders follow predictable suffix patterns. Learn these 15 endings and you'll correctly identify the gender of thousands of nouns without memorising each one individually.
Masculine Suffixes: What Endings Signal Le?
| Suffix | Examples | Common exceptions |
|---|---|---|
| -ment | le moment, le gouvernement, le sentiment | Essentially none — one of the most reliable rules in French |
| -age | le voyage, le mariage, le village | la page, l'image, la cage, la plage, la rage, la nage |
| -eau | le château, le bateau, le tableau | la peau, l'eau |
| -isme | le tourisme, le journalisme, le racisme | Essentially none |
| -al | le journal, le cheval, l'animal | Very few common ones |
| -eur (agent/machine) | le docteur, le vendeur, le moteur | Abstract-quality -eur nouns are feminine instead — see below |
| -et | le ticket, le budget, le projet | la forêt (spelled -êt, not -et — a look-alike, not a true exception) |
| -ail | le travail, le détail, l'ail | Essentially none |
Feminine Suffixes: What Endings Signal La?
| Suffix | Examples | Common exceptions |
|---|---|---|
| -tion / -sion | la nation, la décision, la passion | Essentially none — the single most reliable rule in French |
| -té / -tié | la liberté, la qualité, la moitié | le côté, le comité, l'été, le pâté |
| -ure | la voiture, la culture, la nature | le murmure, le mercure |
| -ance / -ence | la chance, la présence, la patience | le silence |
| -ette | la baguette, la fourchette, la recette | le squelette |
| -ée (time/duration nouns) | la journée, l'année, la soirée | le musée, le lycée, le trophée |
| -eur (abstract quality) | la douleur, la couleur, la valeur, la peur | le bonheur, le malheur |
About 80% of French nouns follow predictable suffix patterns like these. Memorise them and you'll guess correctly most of the time. For 25 specific high-frequency exceptions worth learning by name, see Is It Le or La? 25 French Nouns That Always Catch Learners Out.
How Reliable Are the Suffix Rules?
The suffix rules aren't 100% accurate — French is a language, not a spreadsheet — but they're reliable enough to make educated guesses that are correct 85–90% of the time depending on the specific ending. In a writing exam where you can't consult a dictionary, that's a significant advantage over guessing randomly.
Two Endings to Stop Trusting Entirely
Two endings cause more errors than they prevent, because learners treat them as reliable when they aren't:
- -oire is genuinely mixed, not feminine as many learners assume from words like la mémoire, la victoire, la gloire. Plenty of common -oire nouns are masculine: le laboratoire, le répertoire, le territoire, le conservatoire. When you see -oire, don't guess — verify.
- Unstressed -e is the most commonly mis-relied-upon ending in French. Learners assume any noun ending in a plain -e is feminine, but le problème, le musée, le silence, le vase, le groupe, le rôle are all masculine despite the -e. The ending alone gives no signal either way — you need the fuller suffix (-age, -isme, -ée) to actually predict anything.
Two Rules That Cover the Majority of Cases
If you're short on preparation time, prioritise -tion/-sion and -ment above everything else — they apply to hundreds of the most common French nouns and are virtually exception-free. Together, they cover a significant portion of the abstract nouns that appear in TCF, DELF, and DALF writing tasks. Knowing them cold eliminates a whole category of gender errors before your exam.
How Gender Affects More Than Just the Article
A wrong gender guess doesn't just cost you le versus la — it cascades through the whole sentence. Adjectives must agree: un manteau noir but une robe noire. Past participles with être must agree with the subject's gender: il est parti but elle est partie. Getting the noun's gender right at the start of a sentence is what makes everything downstream of it correct.
Preply
Apprendre une langue avec un tuteur en ligne
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it worth memorising all 15 endings, or just the top few?
Prioritise -tion/-sion, -ment, -isme, and -té first — they're the most reliable and highest-frequency. Expand to the rest once those feel automatic.
What should I do when I don't recognise the ending at all?
Default to checking a dictionary or the Gender Checker rather than guessing blind. A wrong guess is worse than no guess in written production, since the agreement errors it triggers compound through the sentence.
Do these suffix rules apply to plural nouns too?
Gender is a property of the noun itself, not the number — a noun's gender doesn't change between singular and plural, so the same suffix rules apply to identify it either way.
Do the same suffix patterns apply to adjectives, or only nouns?
These specific rules are for identifying a noun's inherent gender. Adjectives work the other way around — their ending changes to match whatever gender the noun already has, most often by adding -e for the feminine form.
How to Look Up Any French Noun's Gender Instantly
Suffix rules give you an educated guess. For anything you're not certain about — especially before committing it to an exam response — verify it first.
The French Gender Checker covers more than 40,000 nouns and returns the definite article (le / la / l'), the indefinite article (un / une), the plural form, and the suffix rule behind the gender in one lookup. Use it during practice sessions so you learn each noun's gender in context — seeing la décision paired with the rule "-tion → feminine" each time you look it up is what makes the pattern stick permanently. For a curated vocabulary list to start with, see The Most Common French Nouns Every B1 Learner Should Know.
