Weak Adjective Declension (after der-words)

The weak declension is the easiest of the three German adjective patterns, and there is a good reason for that ease: it is used precisely when the word in front of the adjective has already done the hard work of showing the case. When a definite article or another der-word leads the noun phrase, it carries the case marking on its own ending — so the adjective is relieved of duty and gets to relax into one of just two endings, -e or -en.

This page covers exactly when the weak pattern applies, the full ending table, and the small mental shortcut that lets you reproduce it without rote memorization.

When the weak declension applies

Use weak endings whenever the adjective is preceded by a der-word. These are the words that inflect the way the definite article der/die/das does and that clearly signal gender and case:

• der, die, das — the definite article itself
• dieser — this
• jener — that (literary; everyday German prefers der … da)
• jeder — every / each (singular)
• welcher — which
• alle — all (plural)
• manche — some, solche — such, beide — both

Because the der-word's ending already pins down the case — dem can only be dative, den (with a singular masculine noun) can only be accusative, des can only be genitive — the adjective does not need to repeat that information. So it weakens.

The full weak table

Here are the endings for gut (good) across all genders, all four cases, singular and plural, after the definite article. Read it slowly; every cell matters.

Look at the shape of it. Out of sixteen cells, only five take -e. Everywhere else, the ending is -en.

The five -e cells are:

• Nominative singular, all three genders: der gute Mann, die gute Frau, das gute Kind
• Accusative feminine and neuter: die gute Frau, das gute Kind

That is the entire list. If you can hold those five exceptions in your head, the rest of the table writes itself: it is all -en.

Why "weak"

The term weak (German schwach) is not a value judgment; it describes the information load. The adjective ending is "weak" because it carries almost no grammatical information — it cannot, on its own, tell you the gender or case. The der-word in front is doing all the signalling. Contrast this with the strong declension, where the adjective must shoulder the full case marking because no article is present. German distributes the case-marking load: when the article is strong, the adjective is weak, and vice versa. This complementary relationship is the deep logic behind the whole system, drawn together on the unified system page.

Nominative: the subject

In the nominative — the case of the subject — singular adjectives all take -e, and plural takes -en.

Accusative: the direct object

The accusative is where masculine breaks away from the rest. Masculine accusative takes -en (matching the shift from der to den), while feminine and neuter stay at -e.

Notice the contrast inside the masculine column: der neue Film (nominative, -e) but den neuen Film (accusative, -en). This is the only gender where the singular ending changes between nominative and accusative — exactly because masculine is the only gender where the der-word itself changes (der → den).

Dative: everything is -en

The dative is the simplest case of all in the weak declension: every single cell, all genders and the plural, takes -en. There are no exceptions to remember here.

A quiet detail in that last example: the dative plural noun itself takes an -n (Hunden), and the adjective takes -en. Both pile up because dative plural is a marking-heavy slot, but neither is hard — they are both just -en-flavoured.

Genitive: also all -en

Like the dative, the weak genitive is uniformly -en across the board. The der-word handles the case fully: des for masculine and neuter, der for feminine and plural.

Common Mistakes

The most basic error: leaving the adjective bare, the way English does ("the good man"). After a der-word in nominative singular, the ending is -e. There is no such thing as a bare attributive adjective in German.

A very common slip: keeping the easy nominative -e even after the case has moved to dative. The preposition mit forces dative, and the entire dative column is -en. Whenever you see dem or der (as a dative), reach for -en.

Masculine is the trap gender. The article shifts der → den in the accusative, and the adjective shifts right along with it: -e → -en. Feminine and neuter would stay at -e here, but masculine does not.

Here the over-correction runs the other way: applying -en where one of the five -e cells lives. Die before a singular feminine noun is nominative or accusative, and both take -e for feminine. The -en you may be thinking of is the plural (die guten Frauen).

Key Takeaways

• Weak endings apply after a der-word (der, dieser, jeder, welcher, alle …), because the article already shows the case.
• Only two endings exist: -e and -en.
• Memorize the five -e cells: nominative singular (all genders) plus accusative feminine and neuter. Everything else is -en.
• The masculine column is the one to watch: der gute Mann but den/dem/des guten Mann(es).
• The entire dative and the entire genitive are -en, with no exceptions.