fiance

/fiˈɑnˌseɪ/

Other forms: fiances

The minute you get down on one knee and ask a man to marry you — assuming he says "yes" — he becomes your fiancé, or the man you are engaged to marry.

Fiancé comes from French; in fact, it is so French that it even has masculine and feminine versions (like many nouns in French). If you're talking about a woman, you would call her a fiancée rather than a fiancé, which is used only to refer to men. The Latin root of fiancé, which is spelled the same way, means "a promise," so you can think of becoming someone's fiance as a promise you're making to go through with the marriage.

Definitions of fiance

1. noun

   a man who is engaged to be married
   synonyms: groom-to-be

   type of:

   betrothed

   the person to whom you are engaged