Feminine Abstract Nouns in -ing and -un

Icelandic builds abstract and verbal nouns from verbs on an industrial scale, and two suffixes do most of the work: -ing and -un. From byggja ("to build") you get bygging ("a building / building [the activity]"); from skoða ("to look at, examine") you get skoðun ("an opinion, an examination"); from þýða ("to translate / to mean") you get þýðing ("a translation / a meaning"). This is one of the most useful classes in the whole noun system, for one reason: the suffix is a label. The moment you see -ing or -un on the end of a noun, you know two things at once — it is feminine, and it declines on the predictable strong-feminine -ar / -ar pattern. No other corner of Icelandic noun morphology hands you gender and declension together so reliably. (This is a productive sub-pattern within the wider strong feminines; the general overview is a separate page.)

The pattern: derived from verbs, reliably feminine

Both suffixes attach to a verb stem to make a noun, much as English -ing (build → building) and -tion / -ment (examine → examination, move → movement) do. The semantic range is the familiar one: the action ("building [the activity]"), the result ("a building"), or a derived abstract sense ("an opinion"). What is different from English — and crucial — is that the result is always grammatically feminine, and it declines the same way every time:

One thing to fix immediately about pronunciation and spelling: -ing and -un are unstressed. Icelandic stress is always on the first syllable of the word, so it is BYGG-ing, SKOÐ-un, VERSL-un — the suffix is a quiet tail, never accented, and it never carries a written accent mark. This is worth saying because English speakers, used to exami-NA-tion with stress near the suffix, instinctively want to lean on the ending. In Icelandic you never do.

The -ing declension: bygging

The -ing nouns take the standard strong-feminine endings: gen.sg -ar, and crucially nom./acc.pl -ar (not the -ir of the mynd type). Here is bygging in full:

Two endings define the class. The genitive singular is -ar (byggingar), which is the normal strong-feminine genitive, and the nominative/accusative plural is also -ar (byggingar) — so the genitive singular and the nominative plural happen to be identical in spelling, both byggingar; you tell them apart by syntax. The accusative and dative singular take -u (byggingu), which is why "in the building" is í byggingunni. There is no stem-vowel change anywhere in the -ing type — the i of -ing is stable, so this is a calm, regular paradigm once you have the -ar / -ar skeleton.

The -un declension: verslun, and the -an- in the plural

The -un nouns share the same singular endings — gen.sg -ar, acc./dat.sg -un unchanged — but they have one quirk you have to memorise: the plural inserts -an- before the ending. So verslun ("shop") pluralises to verslanir, not *verslunir or *verslunar. And note that this plural ending is -ir, not the -ar of the -ing type. Here is verslun in full:

So the -un type has a split personality across number. In the singular, the -un stays intact: verslun, verslun, verslun, verslunar. In the plural nominative, accusative and genitive, the u of -un drops and an -an- appears: verslanir, verslanir, verslana. Only the dative plural keeps the -un-: verslunum. The same applies across the whole -un class: skoðun → skoðanir ("opinions"), ályktun → ályktanir ("conclusions, resolutions"), könnun → kannanir ("surveys"). Once you know the rule — -un in the singular, -an- in the non-dative plural — the class is fully regular.

From verb to noun: a productive, predictable engine

The real power of these suffixes is that they are productive — Icelandic actively coins new -ing and -un nouns from verbs, including modern and borrowed ones, so recognising the pattern lets you decode and even predict vocabulary you have never seen. Line a few up against their source verbs:

A couple of these reward a second look. kennsla ("teaching") sits in a closely related family of feminine deverbal nouns (the -sla type, also feminine, also from a verb) — it declines like a strong feminine too (kennslu, kennslu, kennslu, kennslunnar in the singular) and is overwhelmingly used as a mass noun, so you rarely meet a plural. spurning ("a question," from spyrja "ask") and breyting ("a change," from breyta) are everyday -ing nouns that show how the suffix grabs the verb's meaning and freezes it as a thing. When you learn the verb, learn its noun in the same breath — they travel together.

Why English speakers misgender these — and why they shouldn't

English -ing forms (building, meaning, teaching) are neuter-leaning gerunds: pronoun it, no gender to track. So the instinctive English transfer is to treat Icelandic bygging or þýðing as a sexless "it"-thing and reach for neuter agreement — \þetta þýðingin. That is wrong. The whole point of the -ing / -un suffix is that it *marks feminine gender unambiguously: it is þessi þýðing (feminine), þessi skoðun (feminine), and adjectives and articles must agree as feminine — góð þýðing ("a good translation"), ný bygging ("a new building"). So flip the reflex: where English gives you a gender-neutral -ing noun, Icelandic gives you a guaranteed feminine one. Far from being a difficulty, this is a gift — the suffix does your gender-guessing for you, every time.

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• -ing and -un are productive suffixes that build feminine abstract/verbal nouns from verbs (byggja → bygging, skoða → skoðun).
• The suffix is a label: seeing -ing / -un tells you the noun is feminine and declines on the strong-feminine pattern — gender and declension resolved at a glance.
• -ing type: gen.sg -ar, nom./acc.pl -ar (bygging → byggingar); no stem change. Genitive singular and nominative plural look identical (byggingar).
• -un type: keeps -un in the singular and dative plural (verslunum), but inserts -an- in the nom./acc./gen. plural — verslun → verslanir, skoðun → skoðanir.
• Both suffixes are unstressed: stress stays on the first syllable (BYGG-ing, SKOÐ-un), and they never take a written accent.
• Don't import English's gender-neutral "-ing" gerund — Icelandic -ing / -un is reliably feminine (þessi bygging, góð þýðing).