Adjective Agreement: Gender and Number

French adjectives agree with the nouns they describe, in gender and in number. Here's the core pattern, along with the exceptions that come up most often.

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French adjectives agree in gender (masculine/feminine) and number (singular/plural) with the noun they describe. The two changes are independent, and most adjectives follow a simple default pattern, but a number of common ones don’t, and those are worth learning as a set.

In this post

1. The basic rule
2. The general rule for the plural
3. Plural exceptions worth knowing
4. Adjectives that never change

The basic rule

The rule

A French adjective agrees in gender and number with the noun it describes. In the most typical case, the feminine adds -e and the plural adds -s, and an adjective can take both endings at once.

Examples

un homme intéressant (an interesting man)

une histoire vraie (a true story)

des hommes intéressants (interesting men)

des histoires vraies (true stories)

Forming the feminine has its own set of patterns, such as doubling consonants, -eux → -euse, -if → -ive, and more. We’ll cover that properly in its own post; this one focuses on number.

The general rule for the plural

The rule

In the plural, an adjective normally takes -s, whether it ends in a consonant or in -e.

Examples

un mur blanc → des murs blancs (a white wall → white walls)

une vendeuse sympathique → des vendeuses sympathiques (a friendly saleswoman → friendly saleswomen)

Plural exceptions worth knowing

A handful of adjective endings don’t simply add -s in the masculine plural. These patterns are common enough to learn as a set.

Ending	What happens	Example
-eau → -eaux	Adds -x instead of -s	un beau jardin → de beaux jardins
-eu → -eux	Adds -x instead of -s	un jeu difficile → des jeux difficiles
-x → -x	Already ends in -x, so no change	un enfant curieux → des enfants curieux
-al → -aux	Usually becomes -aux	un problème national → des problèmes nationaux

!

-al isn’t always -aux.

A small number of common adjectives ending in -al simply add -s like a regular adjective: banal, fatal, final, and natal give banals, fatals, finals, natals in the masculine plural. There’s no shortcut beyond noticing, as you read, which ones behave this way, but these four come up often enough to fix in memory early.

Adjectives that never change

The rule

A small group of adjectives stay exactly the same regardless of gender or number. The clearest case is colour adjectives that are really nouns being used as adjectives, describing an object’s colour by comparison to the thing itself.

Examples

une veste marron → des vestes marron (a brown jacket → brown jackets)

des chaussures orange (orange shoes)

un mur crème (a cream-coloured wall)

Marron is, literally, a chestnut. Orange is an orange. Crème is cream. Because these words are nouns first and colours only by association, French treats them as invariable when used this way: describing a colour like marron rather than truly becoming an adjective. Most other colour adjectives (bleu, vert, noir, rouge...) are regular and agree normally.

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The default pattern, add -e for the feminine and -s for the plural, covers the large majority of adjectives you’ll meet. The exceptions above (-eau/-eu/-x/-al, a few -al adjectives that don’t become -aux, and the invariable colour words) are the ones that come up often enough to learn properly rather than look up each time.

Coming soon. Forming the feminine has its own set of patterns. We’ll cover it properly in a dedicated post.