mehmes

As a rule of thumb any word ending in "E" like 'machinE" is probably female.

To the point that in french poetry, rule is to alternate female and male rhyme. The rule being that the female rhyme end with "E" while any other ending is male.

The "E" rule is not all the time.

So I suppose it is all based on how it "sound". As I'm becoming better in german: even without knowing the genre, I can sometime guess it, based on the fact that it "sound" female or male or neutral. It make sense to rely on sound rather than meaning, since the same word is male in a language and female in others