Grammar Unit 1.2: Nouns – Gender of Nouns

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Nouns can be classified according to gender.

Gender nouns have 4 classifications:

  1. Masculine nouns
  2. Feminine nouns
  3. Common gender nouns
  4. Neuter gender nouns
Effective and Creative Lesson Plans ! For Teachers By Teacher: Lesson Planning of Gender in Nouns Subject English Grade V

Masculine Nouns

Masculine nouns are nouns that are male by gender. For example:

  • male
  • man
  • boy
  • son
  • father
  • husband
  • king
  • emperor
  • stallion
  • rooster
  • buck
  • Mister
  • Mr. Smith

Feminine Nouns

Feminine nouns are nouns that are female by gender. For example:

  • female
  • woman
  • girl
  • daughter
  • mother
  • wife
  • queen
  • empress
  • mare
  • hen
  • doe
  • Miss
  • Missus
  • Ms. Baker
  • Mrs. Fisher

Common Gender Nouns

Common gender nouns are nouns that can refer to either gender, male or female. For example:

  • gender
  • person
  • human
  • child
  • adult
  • parent
  • spouse
  • monarch
  • horse
  • chicken
  • deer
  • Dr.

Neuter Gender Nouns

Neuter gender nouns are nouns that have no gender. Basically, non-living things or places have no gender. For example:

  • table
  • chair
  • pen
  • paper
  • bank
  • house
  • school
  • office
  • floor
  • ceiling
  • door
  • window
  • apple
  • banana
  • strawberry
  • celery
  • carrot
  • onion
  • chocolate
  • ice-cream
  • coffee
  • tea

If the noun is a person or an animal, do not fall under neuter gender nouns.

If you say “horse”, it could refer to a male horse or a female horse. However, if you say “mare”, you are referring only to female horses.

Titles/Prefixes can be gendered too such as Mr (masculine), Ms (feminine), Mrs (feminine), Dr (common gender).

Learning about nouns by gender is helpful later on when you decide to use pronouns (he, she, it, him, her etc.) to refer to the noun.

Learning about gender nouns is both fun and useful. Using the right gender noun in your conversation with someone will help your listener to know whether you are referring to a noun with a gender, or not. If the noun has a gender, you both know whether the conversation is about a boy or a girl. For example, if I said to someone, “I would like to enrol my son in a drama school,” the listener would infer that I am thinking about signing up a boy for drama classes in a drama school.

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