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Blond or Blonde?

What is the difference between blond and blonde?

BLOND

Blond is a noun meaning a fair-haired male.
Blond is also an adjective used to describe anybody with fair hair (a male, a female, something neuter (mannequin), or a group (team, sisters)).

BLONDE

Blonde is a noun meaning a fair-haired female.
Blonde is also an adjective used to describe a female (or females) with fair hair. (Note: The adjective blond can be used for this too.)
Writers are often unsure whether to use blond or blonde.

Blond or Blonde (As a Noun)

As a noun, blonde denotes a female. For everything else use blond.

For example:

MASCULINE FEMININE NEUTER (OR UNKNOWN)

Blond or Blonde (As an Adjective)

As an adjective, blond is always correct. It can be used to describe males (e.g., man, king), females (e.g., duchess, actress), neuter objects (e.g., mannequin, toy), and plurals (e.g. men, kings, mannequins, duchesses, children).

However, to showcase your grammar skills, you can use blonde as an adjective to describe singular or plural females (e.g., girl, girls, sister, sisters).

For example:

MASCULINE FEMININE NEUTER (OR UNKNOWN)

A Quick Test

THE SAME RULES WOULD APPLY TO BRUNET AND BRUNETTE IF WE USED THE WORD TO DESCRIBE MALES (WHICH WE DON'T)

The same rules apply for brunet and brunette. However, as the term brunet is rarely used to describe males (people always use brown), only brunette is seen.


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See Also

What are nouns? What are adjectives? List of easily confused words