Language/French/Grammar/Nouns-which-change-meaning-when-they-change-gender

Nouns which change meaning when they change gender

Bonjour! French learners 😀

Nouns in French are either masculine or feminine. Unfortunately, there is no easy rules for predicting the gender of a noun.

Here is a list of French nouns that have different meanings when they are masculine and when they are feminine.

Please write a comment below if you know of other similar nouns! 👌

Once you've mastered this lesson, take a look at these related pages: Possessive determiners, Omission of the article, Conjugation group 1 — verbs whose infinitive ends in —er & Pronominal verbs used reciprocally.

Examples

French	English	French	English
un aide	a helper	l'aide (f)	help
un chèvre	a goat's cheese	une chèvre	a goat
un crème	a white coffee	la crème	cream
le crêpe	crêpe (cloth)	une crêpe	a pancake
un espace	a space	une espace	a space (in printing)
un critique	a critic	une critique	a criticism
un laque	artwork	une laque	a hair lacquer or gloss paint
un manche	a handle	une manche	a sleeve
un livre	a book	une livre	a pound (money or weight)
un manoeuvre	an unskilled worker	une manoeuvre	a manoeuvre
un mémoire	a dissertation	la mémoire	memory (faculty of)
un mode	a way of. . .	La Manche	the English Channel
un merci	a thank you	la merci	mercy
(un mode de vie)	(a way of life)	une mode	a fashion
un moule	a mould	une moule	a mussel
le physique	appearance	la physique	physics
un pendule	a pendulum	une pendule	a clock
un poste	a job, TV or radio set	la poste	the Post Office
un poêle	a stove	une poêle	a frying pan
un somme	a nap	une somme	a sum (of money)
le solde	balance (in an account)	la solde	pay (usually with reference to soldier's pay)
un tour	a turn, trick	une tour	a tower
le Tour de France	bicycle race	La Tour Eiffel	The Eiffel tower
un vase	a vase	la vase	mud
un voile	a veil	une voile	a sail

chose

The noun "chose" is normally feminine when it means 'thing': la/une chose. But the expressions quelque chose 'something', autre chose 'something else', peu de chose 'nothing much', pas grand-chose 'not a great deal' are masculine:

The noun "chose" is feminine when it means "thing": "la/une chose".

But the following expressions:

• "quelque chose" (something),
• "autre chose" (something else),
• "peu de chose", (nothing much),
• "pas grand-chose", (not a great deal)

are masculine:

• Quelque chose est arrivé

Something happened

versus

• Cette chose est arrivée

This thing happened

gens

Gens 'people' requires immediately preceding adjectives or quantifiers to be feminine, but following adjectives/participles or preceding adjectives/quantifiers separated from gens to be masculine:

• Ces vieilles gens sont heureux

Those old people are happy

• certaines gens

some people

• tous les gens

everyone

• Rassurés, les gens qui manifestaient se sont dispersés

Having been reassured, those demonstrating dispersed

amour

amour 'love' is normally masculine singular. It is sometimes, however, feminine plural: les amours. When feminine plural it can mean 'amorous adventures' or it can be a more poetic way of referring to love.

Gender of Nouns (all lessons)

Table of Contents

• General Lesson: How to Guess the Gender of French Nouns
• Gender signalled by the final letters of the written forms of nouns
• Nouns which refer both to males and to females
• Nouns which change form when they refer to males or to Females
• Nouns which change meaning when they change gender
• Nouns which have the same spoken form but two different written forms, with different genders and different meanings
• Gender of countries, towns, islands, rivers, regions and states
• Gender of makes of vehicle and machines
• Names of ships and restaurants
• Nouns which are only masculine or only feminine, but can refer both to men and women
• Nouns with genders which English speakers often get wrong
• Gender of compound nouns

Other Chapters

Table of Contents

Nouns

• Types
• Gender
• Plural

---

Determiners

• Articles
• Typical use of the definite article
• Typical use of the indefinite article
• The partitive article: du, de l', de la, des
• Use of indefinite and partitive articles after the negative forms ne... pas, ne... jamais, ne... plus, ne... guère
• Omission of the article
• Demonstrative determiners
• Possessive determiners

---

Personal and impersonal pronouns

• Subject pronouns
• Object pronouns
• Stressed pronouns
• Demonstrative pronouns
• Possessive pronouns

---

Adjectives

• Adjectives modifying the noun
• Adjectives which follow verbs or verbal expressions
• Adjectives with complements
• Indefinite and negative noun phrases with adjective complements
• Adjectives used as nouns
• Adjectives used as adverbs
• Masculine and feminine forms of adjectives
• Plural forms of adjectives
• Adjective agreement with nouns
• Invariable adjectives
• Compound adjectives
• Comparative and superlative forms of adjectives
• Subjunctive versus indicative in clauses dependent on a superlative adjective
• Absolute use of the superlative

---

Adverbs

• Function of adverbs
• Formation of adverbs with the ending -ment
• Adjectives used as adverbs without addition of -ment
• Phrases used as adverbs
• English and French adverb formation
• Types of adverbs
• Location of adverbs

---

Numbers, measurements, time and quantifiers

• Cardinal numbers
• Ordinal numbers
• Fractions
• Some differences in the use of cardinal and ordinal numbers in French and English
• Measurements and comparisons
• Dates, days, years
• Clock time
• Money
• Quantifiers

---

Verb forms

• Conjugations
• Easy ways of generating some parts of the paradigms
• Changes in the stem form of some -er conjugation verbs
• Verbs whose stems end in c- or g-
• Verb paradigms

---

Verb constructions

• Relations between verbs and their complements
• Intransitive constructions
• Directly transitive verbs
• Indirectly transitive verbs
• Ditransitive verbs
• The passive
• Pronominal verbs
• Impersonal verbs
• Verbs which take noun + adjective or noun + noun complements

---

Verb and participle agreement

• Subject-verb agreement
• Agreement of the past participle with the subject of être
• Agreement of the past participle of verbs conjugated with avoir with a preceding direct object
• Agreement of the past participle of pronominal verbs in compound tenses

---

Tense

• The present
• The past
• The future
• Other tenses indicating the time at which events occur relative to other events
• Combining tenses
• Tenses in direct and reported descriptions of events
• Tenses with si

---

The subjunctive, modal verbs, exclamatives and imperatives

• The attitude of the subject to events: the subjunctive
• The use of devoir, pouvoir, savoir, falloir
• The French equivalents of the English modal verbs: 'would', 'should', 'could', 'may', 'might', 'ought to', and 'must'
• Exclamatives
• Imperatives

---

The infinitive

• Introduction: what are infinitives?
• Infinitives as complements to other verbs
• Verbs which take infinitive complements without a linking preposition
• Verbs which take infinitive complements preceded by the preposition à
• Verbs which take an infinitive complement preceded by de
• Omission of objects before infinitives
• Infinitives as complements to adjectives
• Infinitives as complements to nouns
• Infinitives in subordinate clauses
• Infinitives as polite commands
• Quick-reference index to verbs taking infinitive complements

---

Prepositions

• Introduction
• Prepositions listed alphabetically from à to vers
• French translations for common English prepositions

---

Question formation

• Introduction
• Yes/no questions
• Information questions
• Order of object pronouns in questions involving inversion
• Order of negative particles in questions involving inversion
• Use of question words and phrases: qui?, que?, quoi?, quel?, de qui?, avec combien de? etc.
• Indirect questions

---

Relative clauses

• Introduction
• Use of relative qui
• Use of relative que
• Preposition plus qui
• Use of lequel in relative clauses
• Use of dont, de qui, duquel/de laquelle/desquels/desquelles
• The use of où as a relative pronoun
• Use of relative quoi
• Free relative clauses and the use of ce qui, ce que, ce dont, ce à quoi, ce sur quoi, etc.
• Translating 'whoever', 'whatever', 'wherever', 'whenever', 'however'
• Indicative and subjunctive in relative clauses

---

Negation

• Introduction
• Location of sentence negators
• Order of negators in multiple negation
• Omission of ne in sentence negation
• Order of negative elements in questions and imperatives
• ne... pas
• ne... que
• ne... aucun(e), ne... nul(le)
• ne... jamais
• ne... plus
• ne... guère
• ne... rien
• ne... personne
• ne... ni... ni
• sans used with other negators
• ne used alone

---

Conjunctions and other linking constructions

• Introduction
• Coordinating conjunctions
• Subordinating conjunctions
• Conjunctions sometimes confused by English speakers
• Repeated subordinating conjunctions
• Subordinating conjunctions used with infinitive clauses
• après avoir/ être + past participle linking an infinitive clause to a main clause
• Past participle phrases used as linkers
• Present participles and gerunds

Other Lessons

• Types of adverbs
• Subjunctive Mood
• Mass versus count nouns
• Use of neutral le where no equivalent exists in English
• « de » or « du », « de la », « des » after quantifiers
• Possessive determiners
• L’on VS on
• Use of indefinite and partitive articles after the negative forms
• An adjective agreeing with nouns linked by et, ou or ni
• Adjectives which regularly occur before and after the noun, but with a change of meaning
• Comparatives and Superlatives
• Past participles used as adjectives with the verb être
• Ordinal numbers
• Non agreement of direct object numerals with coûter, peser and mesurer
• Quand utiliser QUAND et QUANT