Rule for feminine · die

Nouns ending in -enz

-enz → die · 0.5%, no exceptions

The rule, in plain language

Nouns ending in -enz are feminine, as in Intelligenz (intelligence), Konkurrenz (competition) or Pressekonferenz (press conference). Many of them come from Latin, where the ending already marked an abstract noun, and German kept the feminine gender. It's a rare pattern - only 0.5% of the frequent nouns in our set - but in exchange it's very reliable: we didn't find a single exception. So you can apply this rule with confidence whenever you see a word ending in -enz.

In the A1-B1 vocabulary of the Genau course, this rule covers 11 words (0.5%) and has no exceptions.

Representative examples

die Intelligenz · intelligence
die Konkurrenz · competition
die Pressekonferenz · press conference

All course words that follow this rule

die Intelligenz
die Konkurrenz
die Pressekonferenz
die Präsenz
die Insolvenz
die Konferenz
die Transparenz
die Existenz
die Effizienz
die Tendenz
die Konsequenz

Rules stick through practice. In the Genau app you train exactly this rule on its own words, with the GENAU! stamp on every correct answer - free, offline, no account. Coming soon to the App Store.