GermanFluent

A1 · Noun gender

die: nouns in -e

Most nouns ending in -e are feminine

FormNomen auf -e → die (meistens)

Meaning and usage

Most German nouns that end in -e are feminine, so they take die: die Lampe, die Schule, die Frage, die Minute, die Tasse. This ending is one of the best clues for guessing a noun's gender. The rule covers the singular only. In the plural, all genders use die, so die Lampen tells you nothing about gender.

A small group of nouns in -e are masculine, and a few are neuter. Common masculine ones are der Name, der Junge, der Kunde, der Kollege, der Neffe. Neuter ones include das Ende and das Auge. When you learn a new noun in -e, learn its article with it.

Examples 6

Test yourself

  1. 1 Sprachbausteine

    Ich sehe dort drüben Lampe.

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    Correct answer: eine

    die Lampe is feminine, so the accusative form after sehe is eine. einen is masculine accusative, ein is neuter, and einem is dative.

    • einem is the masculine or neuter dative form, used after prepositions like mit.
    • einen is the masculine accusative form, used with nouns like Tisch.
    • ein is the neuter form, used with nouns like Kind.

In this topic: Noun gender

  1. der, die, das the three definite articles: der, die, das
  2. ein, eine a or an: ein, eine
  3. die: -ung, -heit, -keit Nouns in -ung, -heit, -keit are usually feminine
  4. die: nouns in -e Most nouns ending in -e are feminine
  5. der: Tage, Monate, Jahreszeiten Days, months, seasons and weather words take der
  6. das: -chen, das Essen Diminutives in -chen and -lein are neuter
  7. die Haustür Compound nouns take the gender of their last part

Example sentences from Tatoeba, used under CC BY 2.0 FR. See sources.