Determining gender of words ending in "e"?

Question

When learning Spanish, there are basic rules taught about word gender: words ending in *o* are usually masculine, words ending in *a* are usually feminine.What about words ending in *e*? Are there any guidelines or rules of thumb for determining the gender of these words? Are the majority of words ending in *e* masculine or feminine?

Answer 1

Género masculino y femenino

Masculino Femenino

* Termina en -o: *Termina en -a:

oso osa

perro. perra

león leona

* Terminan en -e:

jefe jefa

Terminan en *Termina en

-a, -e, -r, -y. -isa, -ina, -iz, -a

poeta poetisa

héroe heroína

actor actriz

rey reina

No son lo mismo en su significado:

cigarro - cigarra

gesto - gesta

trompo - trompa

libro - libra

paje - paja

ratón - rata

mosco - mosca

Masculino y femenino completamente diferentes en su escritura:

padre - madre

caballero - dama

hombre - mujer

macho - hembra

caballo - yegua

carnero - oveja

yerno - nuera

La misma palabra para masculino y femenino:

el/ la artista

vigía

centinela

testigo

estudiante

modista

astronauta

Presidente

Los animales:

murciélago macho

murciélago hembra

También:

araña

ballena

foca

rinoceronte

jirafa

mosca

Answer 2

Great question! This is a common concern for many Spanish students and it makes a lot of sense.

First off, as a general rule of thumb most nouns that end in "e" are masculine. However, this isn't a hard and fast rule, so the best thing to is to always, always practice using and checking the gender of the word when it is new to you. That way, it gets embedded in your memory accurately as you use it more and more and also helps you when there are those strange, tricky ones that don't follow the usual patterns.

A few more rules that tend to help (again, there always can be the stray word that doesn't follow these patterns, so be on the lookout for those):

1. words that end with -dad are almost always feminine, such as la enfermedad (the sickeness/disease) or la sociedad (the society)
2. words that end with -ión are almost always feminine , such as la asociación (the association) or la formación (the formation). You might have noticed that these words are usually very close to their English counterpart in sound and meaning, otherwise known as a cognate.
3. words that end with -l are typically masculine, such as el árbol (the tree) or el farol (the streetlight/lantern)
4. words that end with -ma are almost always masculine, the most famous one is el problema (the problem) and another is el sistema (the system)