Cushitic languages have a number of interesting properties in the category of number. None of these are valid for all Cushitic languages. Number is not obligatorily expressed in various Cushitic languages which have a general number form that is unspeci^ed for number. Nonetheless morphological number marking in the noun is often complex in two ways: there are many competing lexically determined morphological markers and many di^erent constellations of derived singular and derived plurals.Number and gender show complex interactions in Cushitic. Number formatives impose gender and hence di^erent gender values for di^erent number forms in the same lexeme, sometimes apparent gender polarity (singular and plural having opposite values for gender). A theoretically challenging property of some languages is that that there is a third gender, here labelled ‘plural’ because it takes the agreement morphology of 3PL pronouns.