German nouns ending in -in

Add -in to a man's job or nationality and you get a woman: der Lehrer, die Lehrerin. Always feminine.

Say the article and the noun together. The ending is a hint, not a word.

On the 471 common nouns with this ending in the frequency list behind these rules, 99.4% take die. We label that “always”. The count is from german-nouns (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0). It is not an exam pass rate.

Exceptions in this rule

• der Muffin

Learn the exceptions as pairs. The ending is still worth using for every other noun.

Examples the course uses

• die Lehrerin
• die Ärztin
• die Freundin

In this dictionary

• die Ärztin
• die Beamtin
• das Bein
• die Chefin
• der Cousin
• die Enkelin
• die Entwicklerin
• die Freundin
• die Kellnerin
• die Kollegin
• die Lehrerin
• die Nachbarin
• die Schülerin
• die Schwägerin
• die Sekretärin
• die Softwareentwicklerin
• die Studentin
• der Termin
• der Verein

Back to the article dictionary · Train der, die and das