fiancée

American  

[fee-ahn-sey, fee-ahn-sey] / ˌfi ɑnˈseɪ, fiˈɑn seɪ /

Or fiancee

noun

1. a woman engaged to be married.

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fiancée British  

/ fɪˈɒnseɪ /

noun

1. a woman who is engaged to be married

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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

Explanation

A fiancée is a woman engaged to be married. On the Muppet Show, Miss Piggy was Kermit's fiancée and covered him in kisses. A fiancée is a woman engaged to be married; a man engaged to be married is a fiancé — two "e"s for a woman, one for a man — according to French spelling conventions. Fiancée, from mid-19th century French, means "a woman to whom one is betrothed" and is linked to the noun fiance, which refers to "a promise." In other words, a bride-to-be is promised to a groom-to-be, and vice versa.

Example Sentences

When O’Donnell got engaged in 2011, he tweeted that he felt sorry for the fiancée and her parents.

From Slate • Jun. 11, 2026

In the meantime, my fiancée is miserable in her current job.

From MarketWatch • Jun. 9, 2026

His fiancée, actor Erica Tazel, says she still wants to be his wife as he faces the fatal illness.

From Los Angeles Times • May 20, 2026

One groom insisted the invitations include a reference to the snickerdoodle cookies he bakes with his fiancée.

From The Wall Street Journal • May 19, 2026

“And Pa’s fiancée is nice and wears nice clothes.”

From "P.S. Be Eleven" by Rita Williams-Garcia