L'intrus
French home nouns ending in -e that are masculine
Find masculine French home nouns among feminine ones using a supplied glossary. Learn meuble, étage, garage and lustre, with canapé and lavabo for comparison.
- A1
- 6 rows
- Find the odd one out
- Learn this in the A1 notebook →
In short
Un meuble, un étage, un garage and un lustre are masculine despite ending in plain e. Learn the article with the noun. Un canapé and un lavabo are masculine comparison words here; they have different endings, so they are not examples of the plain-e spelling pattern.
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The final letter alone does not decide a French noun’s gender. Use the supplied glossary to find one masculine noun in each row. The other three are feminine. The first four rows focus on masculine nouns ending in plain e; the last two practise the same article-reading skill with canapé and lavabo.
| Masculine | Meaning | Feminine words used in the rows |
|---|---|---|
| un meuble | a piece of furniture | une chambre ; une table ; une porte |
| un étage | a floor of a building | une fenêtre ; une cuisine ; une chaise |
| un garage | a garage | une baignoire ; une armoire ; une étagère |
| un lustre | a chandelier | une commode ; une couverture ; une lampe |
| un canapé | a sofa | une fenêtre ; une table ; une armoire |
| un lavabo | a washbasin | une porte ; une douche ; une chaise |
Tap the word that doesn't belong in each row.
The glossary gives un meuble. Chambre, table and porte all take une.
Étage takes un despite its final e. The other three nouns are feminine in the glossary.
Garage is masculine: un garage. Baignoire, armoire and étagère take une.
Lustre takes un. The other three home words take une.
Canapé is masculine. Its final é is an additional comparison case, rather than the plain e of meuble.
Lavabo takes un, while porte, douche and chaise are feminine.
Make the article part of the item you learn
When you add meuble to a vocabulary list, write un meuble, rather than meuble alone. The article gives information that the final e does not reliably supply. You can then build un petit meuble and une petite table with the correct agreement around each noun.
Il y a un meuble près de la fenêtre et une lampe sur la table.
There is a piece of furniture near the window and a lamp on the table.
Keep the spelling distinctions visible
The e in meuble, étage, garage and lustre is a plain final e. Canapé ends in accented é, while lavabo ends in o. Those two words are included for comparison because the task is to use known articles across home vocabulary. They do not support a claim that every masculine noun in the activity has the same ending.
A home noun can also have a familiar English-looking shape without sharing the gender of another French word. Garage is masculine and chambre is feminine. In the exercise, the glossary is the reference for every choice, so there is no need to infer a rule from how an English translation looks.