Gender of Nouns

Many English nouns come in masculine and feminine pairs — a man and a woman, a king and a queen, a lion and a lioness. Some pairs are completely different words, some add an ending such as -ess, and some change only slightly.

This guide collects the most common gendered noun pairs for people, family members, titles, occupations, and animals. Note that modern English increasingly prefers gender-neutral terms for many jobs (actor, server, flight attendant), but the traditional pairs are still worth knowing — especially for reading older texts and understanding how the language is built.