In our latest blog post looking at the commonest meanings of Spanish nouns whose gender varies with meaning we look at moral.
You can listen to the pronunciation of moral in the audio clip below:
In the feminine, la moral can mean morality or morals (or similar):
Era una afrenta a la moral.
It was an affront to morality.
Rechaza la moral burguesa.
She rejects bourgeois morality or morals.
No tenía una moral sólida.
He didn’t have sound morals or a solid moral compass.
La moral can also mean morale (or spirits):
La moral era muy baja.
Morale was very low.
El hacer ejercicio te levanta la moral.
Exercising lifts your spirits.
In the masculine un moral is a mulberry (tree) – most trees are masculine in Spanish (el manzano, apple tree; el cerezo, cherry tree; el roble, oak; el olmo, elm…) – and una mora is a mulberry fruit:
Cerca de la casa crecen un moral blanco y un moral negro.
Near the house grow a white mulberry and a black mulberry.
Las moras del moral son ricas en vitaminas.
Mulberry fruits or mulberries are rich in vitamins.
DID YOU KNOW?
As well as meaning mulberry (fruits), las moras is the Spanish for blackberries – berries whose knobbly surface looks similar to that of the mulberry.
Two other names for the mulberry tree are feminine exceptions to the masculine tree pattern. These are la morera and la moreda. (Una moreda can also mean a mulberry grove.)
People with the surname Morales probably had an ancestor who lived near to or owned some mulberry trees!
To find out about another noun that can be either masculine or feminine in Spanish depending on the sense, join us next week.
