German words ending in -nis

A noun ending in -nis is das, with a short list to learn against it.

das Baby the character this deck pins every das-word on

-nis is a suffix German builds with, not a sound a word happens to end on. It turns a verb or an adjective into a thing: erleben gives das Erlebnis, ergeben gives das Ergebnis, geheim gives das Geheimnis. Because the suffix does the work, the suffix carries the gender, and it carries das.

The suffix has a feminine streak in a handful of words, and this deck reaches that family too. Those are words to learn, not holes in the pattern, and the list below names what the deck holds.

Something else on this page is not the suffix at all. Tennis is an English loan that happens to end in the same letters, and there is no German verb behind it. It is das anyway, so it costs you nothing here, but notice which words the ending explains and which ones it merely fits.

Worked examples

das Ergebnis result
das Zeugnis certificate
das Geheimnis secret
das Erlebnis experience
die Erlaubnis permission

Measured on this deck

90% of the 10 nouns ending in -nis are das

9 nouns ending in -nis in this deck are das and one is not, which puts the ending at 90 percent. That is a suffix doing its job, not a tendency.

das Ergebnis die Ergebnisse
das Tennis
das Zeugnis die Zeugnisse
das Ereignis die Ereignisse
das Erlebnis die Erlebnisse
das Gefängnis die Gefängnisse
das Geheimnis die Geheimnisse
das Verhältnis die Verhältnisse
das Verständnis die Verständnisse

The ones that break it

One noun in this deck ends in -nis and is not das. The suffix turns feminine in a small family of words, and what follows is the part of that family a B1 syllabus asks you for. Learn it as a word, not as a broken rule.

die Erlaubnis die Erlaubnisse

What a card looks like

Ergebnis

Try it

-nis words are not thick on the ground, and none of them reached the mixed deck below. The list above is where the suffix is, and it is small enough to read in one sitting.

Wohnung