femininegenitive

The feminine genitive is the genitive case as it applies to feminine nouns in languages that have grammatical gender and a case system. It marks relationships such as possession, description, or origin, and its exact form depends on the language’s inflection patterns. The term is descriptive rather than indicating a separate, universal category.

In German, for example, feminine nouns in the singular take der in the genitive: die Frau becomes der Frau (the woman’s). In the plural, the genitive is der Frauen (the women’s). The noun itself typically does not receive an -s in the feminine genitive, unlike many masculine or neuter nouns in genitive singular. A possessive phrase such as das Buch der Frau illustrates the function of the feminine genitive to indicate ownership.

In Russian, feminine nouns also form a genitive case, with distinct endings. For instance, жена (woman) has genitive singular женщины and genitive plural женщин. The genitive is used to indicate possession or partitive relations, as in рука женщины (the hand of the woman) or часть женщины (part of the woman).

In other languages with gendered nouns—such as Latin and Greek—the genitive forms of feminine nouns follow their own declension patterns and are used similarly to express possession, attribution, or quantity. Across languages, feminine genitive is a standard manifestation of the genitive case rather than a separate grammatical category, varying in form and usage according to the language’s morphology.