fiancée

Or fi·an·cee

[fee-ahn-sey, fee-ahn-sey]

noun

1. a woman engaged to be married.

fiancée

/ fɪˈɒnseɪ /

noun

1. a woman who is engaged to be married

Gender Note

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.

Word History and Origins

Origin of fiancée¹

First recorded in 1850–55; from French; feminine of fiancé

Example Sentences

Surridge has found confidence and calmness in Nashville, a place he enjoys calling home with his fiancee, young son and their dog.

Read more on BBC

In Townsend’s speech as Matthews, he also notes two sources of pain that have made him a better artist: his adulterous fiancée and selfish brother.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

Ariel was abducted with his fiancée, Arbel Yehud, who was released during a cease-fire in January.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

He and his fiancée, Anamaria Goltes, welcomed a daughter, Gabriele, in 2023.

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In Rwanda he went on upbeat training rides with his Slovenian team and his fiancée, the Slovenian women’s star Urska Zigart, posting a video of himself play-racing a determined local on a single-speed.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal