As far as I can tell, the descendants of Latin "clavis" are all feminine, but in Italian "chiave", although it is also feminine, on the surface appears to be masculine: chiave/chiavi.
How did this feminine word get a typically masculine ending?
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Sign up to join this communityAs far as I can tell, the descendants of Latin "clavis" are all feminine, but in Italian "chiave", although it is also feminine, on the surface appears to be masculine: chiave/chiavi.
How did this feminine word get a typically masculine ending?
Generally, nouns ending in -o are masculine (il gelato, il tavolo) and those ending in -a are feminine (l’arancia, la sedia).
Nouns ending in -e can be either masculine or feminine (il cellulare is masculine, la chiave is feminine).
A few nouns ending in -a are masculine (il cinema, il problema) and a few ending in -o are feminine (la foto, la mano).
Masculine nouns, in the plural, normally end in -i.
Feminine nouns ending in -a end in -e in the plural, while feminine nouns ending in -e end in -i in the plural.
Words ending –ore are usually masculine
Words ending –ione are usually feminine
With human beings the gender of the noun is usually determined by the sex of the person referred to
Most masculine nouns ending in -tore change to -trice for the feminine
Exceptions include: tintore → tintora (dyer) / avventore → avventora (customer) / impostore → impostora (imposter)
So we have that most of the nouns agree with the following rules:
Within the first two classes, some nouns form the plural based on specific rules.
-e is not a typically masculine ending at all. Just think of ape, arte, automobile, base, botte, capitale, carne, cassaforte, cenere, classe, comune, croce, estate, falce, fame, fede, filiale, fine, frase, gente, igiene, indole, lavastoviglie, legge, lepre, lince, luce, madre, mente, moglie, morale, nave, neve, noce, note, notte, pace, parete, patente, percentuale, polvere, pulce, quiete, reclame, rete, selce, serpe, sete, spirale, stampante, tigre, torre, trave, visuale, voce, volpe, all nouns ending in -ie, most nouns ending in -ice, -igine, -ione, -ite, -udine, etc.