fiancée
Americannoun
noun
Gender
When French words describe or name people, they are inflected to match the gender of the person. To mark a noun or adjective as feminine, French adds an unaccented letter e at the end of a word. If the person engaged to be married is a man, he’s a fiancé . The bride-to-be is a fiancée . This distinction is usually preserved in English language use of these words: fiancé for a man, fiancée for a woman. However, it is also common for borrowed words to lose some foreign characteristics. This is why, for example, words like cliché , fiancée , or résumé may be written in English without accent marks. Such an omission in French would be an error, resulting in the wrong pronunciation of these words, but in English, it is acceptable to lose this foreign feature. Similarly, some English speakers will completely drop the gender agreement in the fiancé — fiancée distinction, using fiancé for both men and women. The prescriptive rules of English grammar do not encourage the reduction to a single form, though it is a natural phenomenon for words borrowed into English to neutralize gender markings. The adjective née presents a slightly different case. The feminine inflection of this French word is the commonly borrowed form, since women are usually the ones to distinguish their maiden names from their married ones. However, the masculine form né would be the appropriate one for a man in reference to his original last name, in the increasingly common event of the groom’s name changing with his marriage. The spelling with the extra e is the marked feminine form and should be used to name or describe a woman: née , divorcée , fiancée . If you choose to spell these French words with their accents, be sure to place them correctly. For words ending in ée, the accented é is the first of the two.
Etymology
Origin of fiancée
First recorded in 1850–55; from French; feminine of fiancé
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The screen tests were not successful, but Vadim - who was six years older - took her on, first as his protégé and then as his fiancée.
From BBC
Peaty reportedly met his fiancee through her sister Tilly while the two were contestants on Strictly Come Dancing in 2021.
From BBC
With Kelce also expected to marry his fiancee Taylor Swift next summer, is now the time for one of the NFL's greatest tight ends to call it a day?
From BBC
In April, pop star Katy Perry, Bezos's fiancée Lauren Sánchez and CBS presenter Gayle King were among six women blasted into space aboard a Blue Origin rocket for a flight that lasted about 11 minutes.
From BBC
He has 28 million followers on Instagram, where he flashes his extravagant life, his collection of cars, and his fiancée, the Dutch Olympic-speedskater-slash-model, Jutta Leerdam.
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
