The history of the language lecture 3 Morphology

neuter: word (word), bearn (child), feoh (cattle),hūs (house).

There are some peculiarities of declension of the nouns that had originally -j- or -w- in the stem (they are called -ja-stems and -wa-stems); they may preserve this sound in declension; but otherwise the differences are minor.

Examples of -ja- stems are: hyse (young warrior), fiscere (fisherman), net (net), bedd (bed).

The nouns belonging to ō -stems are all feminine. In the form of the nominative case monosyllabic nouns with a short root vowel of this class have ending –u; if there are two and more syllables or the root vowel is long, there is no ending at all:

The nouns of this group: caru (care), scamu (shame).

The nouns formerly having -i-sufix, now called -i-stems might belong to all the three genders, and the case endings are different for different genders - masculine and neuter have the same endings as masculine and neuter nouns of the -a- stems, and feminine noun endings repeated the endings of the -o-stems.

The nouns of this group are: masculine: mere (sea), mete (food); neuter: sife (sieve), hilt (hilt); feminine: wiht (thing), hyde (hide), woruld (world, age).

Nouns belonging to -u-stems may be of masculine or feminine gender:
The nouns of this group are: masculine: wudu (wood), medu (honey); feminine: nosu (nose), hand (hand).
-o- and -u- stems in Old English had only three distinctive endings both for the singular and the plural and that was sufficient for proper communication. -i- stems, on the other hand, illustrate the tendency to dissolution of the former classes of nouns and a certain tendency for regrouping the declensions according to the gender of the noun.
Weak Declension
This class of nouns consists of a rather numerous group of nouns originally having - n-stems; the suffix is well-preserved in declension of nouns in Old English, but disappeared in the nominative case. -n- stem nouns may be of all three genders.
Examples: masculine: wita (wise man), steorra (star), flota (ship, fleet), neuter: cofa (chamber, repositary). feminine: heorte (heart), sunne (sun), hearpe (harp).