Is professeur masculine or feminine in French?
Professeur is traditionally masculine: le professeur, un professeur. It was long used for a teacher of any gender. Today the feminine form la professeure is fully accepted and officially recommended, especially in Canada. So both le professeur and la professeure are correct — the choice depends on who you mean and where you are writing.
Why does professeur have two accepted forms?
Historically, many French job titles existed only in the masculine, and le professeur covered everyone. Over recent decades, French institutions have feminised profession names to reflect the person’s gender. The Office québécois de la langue française recommends la professeure, and it is now the norm across Canada; France has increasingly adopted it too. This matters for TCF and TEF Canada candidates in particular: if you are writing to or about a woman, la professeure is the expected, up-to-date choice. Both forms are safe in an exam — what an examiner will penalise is a mismatched article, not your choice between the two accepted spellings.
How do you use professeur in a sentence?
These examples show the masculine, the feminine, and the plural in natural context:
Preply
Apprendre une langue avec un tuteur en ligne
- Mon professeur de français est très patient. (My French teacher is very patient.)
- La professeure a corrigé nos rédactions. (The teacher corrected our essays.)
- Les professeurs de l’école organisent un examen blanc. (The school’s teachers are organising a mock exam.)
The mistake learners make with professeur
The most common error is writing une professeur — pairing the feminine article une with the masculine form professeur. That mix is incorrect. Choose one complete form: un professeur / le professeur (masculine) or une professeure / la professeure (feminine, with the final -e). Getting the article and the ending to agree is exactly the kind of detail that separates a B2 script from a B1 one.
When you are unsure of any noun’s gender while writing — in a TCF message, a DELF letter, or everyday French — verify it before you commit it to the page. The French Gender Checker returns the correct article, the plural, and the rule behind the gender for any noun in a single lookup, so a word like professeur is never a guess again.
