Blonde vs. Blond: What’s the difference?

The difference between blond and blonde

Blond and blonde aren’t homophones because even though they’re spelled differently, they mean the same things. They can be adjectives or nouns. If you’re describing a person, place, or thing, blond(e) would mean fair or pale yellow, like someone’s hair color. You can also use blond(e) by itself to describe a person who has pale yellow hair.

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The history behind the two spellings

One of the reasons you may see blond or blonde used interchangeably is because of grammatical gender rules. In linguistics, some nouns are assigned gender categories, like masculine or feminine, and the gender can impact how attached articles and adjectives are spelled. This is commonly seen in the French language.

For example, the cat is an English article and noun that would be translated as le chat in French. In the French language, cat is a masculine noun, so le is used for the article “the”. Another example is that the mouse is translated to la souris in French. In this example, mouse is a feminine noun, so la is used instead of le.

The French language applies that same concept to many of its adjectives. If the cat has blond fur, the blond cat would be translated to le chat blond in French. The same concept applies to the second example used where the blonde mouse would be translated to la souris blonde in French. Notice how an -e is added to the end of the adjective once the noun is feminine.

When to use blond vs. blonde

Even if you don’t speak or write using the French language, it’s important to remember that the English language comes from a combination of many other languages. The English language followed grammatical gender rules up until the 1200s, and it borrowed many words from languages that follow these rules, like French and Spanish.

You can continue to follow those same rules when using blond or blonde in your writing because both are technically correct and widely accepted. Some examples are:

The woman has blonde hair.
Because woman is a feminine noun, blonde is spelled with an -e at the end.

The blond man walks fast.
Blond is being used to describe a masculine noun, the man, so it’s spelled without the added -e.

If you’re not fluent in French, you may not know what gender a noun is—especially since the English language doesn’t follow grammatical gender rules anymore. However, there is a general rule of thumb you can follow based on your locational preference. American English uses blond as the preferred spelling whereas British English prefers blonde no matter the perceived gender of the noun.

Be consistent no matter which rule of thumb you choose to follow. If you decide to use grammatical gender rules, double check any nouns that have genders you’re unsure about. Make sure you know if your location prefers blond or blonde when using that as a deciding factor. Clear spelling guidelines can strengthen your writing and make your language clear to the reader.