Understanding gender in Arabic: Is حرب masculine or feminine?

Usually, it is pretty easy to identify the gender in Arabic.

But there are exceptions.

Indicators for feminine words

Let us first take a look at the regular feminine endings. In Arabi­c, there are 3 different indicators or signals to define a word as feminine.

Special kind of nouns

• The ending اء is also the pattern for adjectives (صِفة) for colors and physical deficiencies in the singular feminine form.
• The letter ى is the pattern for the feminine form of a com­parative (اِسْم تَفْضِيل). For example: older, smaller.

Here are some examples:

The Arabic word for “war”: حَرْب

It doesn’t look feminine – but it is feminine!

Like in other languages, there are words that look masculine by shape but are exceptions.

Common exceptions – words that look masculine but are feminine

Here is a vocabulary list with words that look masculine but are feminine.

Watch out: If you want to add an adjective, you will need the femin­ine form:

Gender of body parts in Arabic

When you have two parts of one (mostly pairs) like: legs (رِجْل), eyes (عَيْن), ears (أُذُن), tooth (سِنّ) or hands (يَد), then these words are also feminine. In contrast, the words for nose (أَنْف), mouth (فَم), etc. are masculine as you only have one!

Some parts of the body can be either masculine or feminine, like: head (رَأْس), liver (كَبِد) or upper arm(عَضُد)

Also feminine are:

• names of newspapers and magazines, for example: al-Ahram (الْأهْرام)
• names of countries, cities and towns are normally femin­ine, except: Morocco (الْمَغْرِب), Jordan (الأُرْدُن), Lebanon (لُبْنان), Iraq (الْعِراق) and Sudan (السُّدان)

Arabic nouns which can be treated as masculine or feminine

Some examples:

• Unlocking Arabic #2: Distinguishing قادة and قيادات
• The Qur’an Revisited: The use of the passive voice
• How to build the passive voice in Arabic easily