fiancé
or fi·an·ce
Origin of fiancé
usage note for fiancé
Words nearby fiancé
FIANCÉ VS. FIANCÉE
What’s the difference between fiancé and fiancée?
The word fiancé is traditionally used to refer to the man that a person is engaged to be married to (the groom-to-be). Fiancée is traditionally used to refer to the woman that a person is engaged to be married to (the bride-to-be).
However, the spelling fiancé—with just one e—is sometimes used without reference to gender.
The two words are pronounced exactly the same. Their different endings are due to the fact that they derive from French, which has grammatical gender, meaning that some words end differently depending on whether they are applied to men or women (with e being the feminine ending). This happens in a few other pairs of words in English, like blond and blonde, though in many cases the term without the e has become largely gender-neutral. This is the case with both blond and fiancé.
Similar to some other words derived from French (like résumé), they are sometimes written without accents, as fiance and fiancee.
Want to learn more? Read the full breakdown of the difference between fiancé and fiancée.
Quiz yourself on fiancée vs. fiancé!
True or False?
The spelling fiancé can be used for any gender.