NOUNS WITH EXCEPTIONAL GENDERS
FRENCH
To each example we insert the adjective "good" so that the definite article
will not replace the vowel with an apostrophe.
- l'image - l' could be masculine or feminine
- la bonne image - la is definitely feminine
-age (we expect masculine: le _____age )
- la bonne page the good page
- la bonne image the good image
-ée (we expect feminine: la _____ée )
- le bon trophée the good trophy
-son (we expect feminine: la _____son )
- le bon poison the good poison
-ure (we expect feminine: la _____ure )
- le bon murmure the good whisper
-oire (we expect feminine: la _____oire )
- le bon laboratoire the good laboratory
All chemistry terms that end with -ure are masculine.
Our goal here was to find common words. Other words were listed in the references I reviewed for things like ivory and tuning fork--words you probably
will not need any time soon. For some words that corresponded to common English words, I found that when I put them into my computer translator program, it gave me other words, and it didn't give me the word in the reference, so I decided that the word in the reference must be obscure.