Nouns

Gender Recognition - Masculine, Feminine or Neuter?

Some nouns fit naturally into declensions by gender; puella and mulier are feminine, vir and puer are masculine, iter and baculum are neuter, etc. Others can be, well, strange and need to be memorized. A few nouns, such as canis, canis m. or f., can be more than one gender.
Here are some ideas that might help:

1. Most 1st declension nouns are feminine (genitive case ends in -ae).
   Nouns that refer to a masculine occupation, such as nauta, agricola, auriga and even poeta (strangely, since most poets were men), are masculine and as such will need a masculine adjective form to describe them.
   The name of a man that has 1st declension endings is always masculine. We see an example with our Ecce Romani runaway Geta. One needs to say Geta est strenuus, not strenua.
   REMINDER: An adjective agrees with the noun it modifies in CASE, NUMBER and GENDER. If the two words happen to be in the same declension they will have similar endings, e.g. Marcus est strenuus.
   
   
2. All 2nd declension nouns with nominative singular forms ending in 'us' or 'er' are masculine.
   Remember one can recognize a second declension noun when the genitive or second principal part ends in 'i'.
   
   
3. All 2nd declension nouns with nominative singular forms ending in 'um' are neuter.
   
   
4. 4th declension nouns with nominative singular forms ending in 'us' are masculine with a few exceptions.
   Exceptions are manus, manûs, f. hand or band, domus, domûs f. home and idus, idûs, f. ides (13th or 15th of the month)
   Remember that one knows the declension from the genitive form.
   Note the 'ûs' - a long 'û' signifies the 4th declension.
   
   
5. All 4th declension nouns with nominative singular forms ending in 'u' are neuter.
   • e.g. genu, genûs n. knee
   
   
6. Most 5th declension nouns are feminine.
   The exceptions are 'dies, diêî m. and meridies, meridiêî m.
   CAVE! Not all nouns ending in 'es' in the nominative singular are 5th declension words.
   One needs to remember the genitive case to know whether the word is 5th or 3rd declension.
   Thus res, reî f. thing is 5th declension while miles, militis m. is 3rd declension.
   
   
7. Then there is the 3rd declension, but difficult as it may seem, there are a few helps.
   • 3rd declension nouns ending in 'as' in the nominative and 'atis' in the genitive are usually feminine.
         e.g. aestas, aestatis f. summer
   • 3rd declension nouns ending with 'us' in the nominative singular and 'eris' in the genitive singular are usually neuter.
         e.g. onus, oneris n. burden, load
   • 3rd declension nouns ending with 'en' in the nominative singular and 'inis' in the genitive singular are usually neuter.
         e.g. nomen, nominis n. name

^ Grammatica