The der/die/das rules / Nouns ending in -heit

Rule for feminine · die

Nouns ending in -heit

-heit → die · 0.8%

The rule, in plain language

The suffix -heit builds feminine abstract nouns (die), usually from an adjective: die Sicherheit (safety, from "sicher"), die Mehrheit (majority, from "mehr"), or die Vergangenheit (the past, from "vergangen"). It's a small but perfectly reliable pattern - among our 2,400-word list, all 20 nouns ending in -heit are feminine, with zero exceptions. So you can learn it with confidence: almost any new word you meet ending in -heit will be die.

In the A1-B1 vocabulary of the Genau course, this rule covers 20 words (0.8%) and has no exceptions.

Representative examples

All course words that follow this rule

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