Blond vs. Blonde

Sometimes there’s an E at the end, and sometimes there’s not. This post will teach you the simple rules of which word to use when.

With males—noun usage
If you’re writing about a boy or a man with golden-colored hair, use blond (no E).

Example: The handsome man is a blond.

With females—noun usage
However, if you’re writing about a golden-haired girl or woman, use blonde (with the E).

Example: The pretty woman is a blonde.

With males and/or females—adjective usage
You’ll notice that we have so far been talking about nouns (when we use blond or blonde to represent the person). But what about when you simply want to use an adjective to describe a person as being blond? As an adjective, blond never has an E at the end. It’s always simply blond.

Example: The blond man walked through the door.
Example: The blond woman walked through the door.
Example: The blond family walked through the door.

In the examples above, since blond is used as an adjective to describe the noun (man/woman/family), it follows the adjective rule and doesn’t have an E at the end.

Blame the French
Wonder why we have two spellings of this noun? Blame the French. French regularly assigns gender to words and spells them differently based on whether they are masculine or feminine. Since we inherited the word blond/e from French, we also inherited the two ways of spelling it.

Test your skills with a quiz. Fill in blond or blonde in the blanks. The answers are at the bottom.

1. The backyard was filled with _______ children.
2. That tall lady is a _______.
3. The man picking his nose is a _______.
4. The _______ dancers twirled across the stage.

Answers: 1. blond (adjective) 2. blonde (noun) 3. blond (noun) 4. blond (adjective)

Erin Servais is occasionally a blonde. She is also lead book editor at Dot and Dash LLC. Learn how to hire her for your next book project:


23 thoughts on “Blond vs. Blonde

  1. I blame the French for just about everything.
    Okay, so I am blond, not a blonde. But if, for example, I make a blonde joke (which are uproariously funny, but somehow become racist if you change the hair color–because, you know, blond people are stupid and slutty), should I make it a “blond” joke so that I’m not being sexist?

    • I’m not sure about that one. I mean, when are blond/e jokes ever about men? (They should be.) Perhaps because it’s used as an adjective there, it should be “blond,” not because of any sexist reason. Your best bet is to probably just stop saying them. 🙂

    • Following the rule, it would be correct to make a BLOND joke since it is an adjective. “Blonde” jokes are grammatically wrong even if it is about a blonde. lol


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  4. According to Merriam Webster, the adjective has masculine and feminine forms as well. The difference is that you can get away with only using the masculine form if you want, whereas it is required with the noun.

  5. The best way is to use the same form regardless of if the word is a noun or adjective. For example, “blonde woman” is a nominal word group. This is so despite the fact that the word “blonde” is used to describe the woman.

    to be updated regularly. It carries pleasant stuff.

    • The people next door are blond men and blonde women. The sentence is awkward, but repetition will probably not be needed. Gregory Chandler

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