Learn English Language: Lesson 26 - 30

Lesson 26

Put in convenient form, the division of words according to sex, or the lack of it, is,

Gender nouns
MASCULINE: Male beings.
FEMININE: Female beings.

Neuter nouns: Names of inanimate things, or of living beings whose sex cannot be determined.

Lesson 27

The inflections for gender belong, of course, only to masculine and feminine nouns. Forms would be a more accurate word than inflections, since inflection applies only to the case of nouns.

There are three ways to distinguish the genders:—

(1) By prefixing a gender word to another word.

(2) By adding a suffix, generally to a masculine word.

(3) By using a different word for each gender.

Lesson 28: Gender shown by prefixes

Usually the gender words he and she are prefixed to neuter words; as he-goat—she-goat, cock sparrow—hen sparrow, he-bear—she-bear.

One feminine, woman, puts a prefix before the masculine man. Woman is a short way of writing wifeman.

Lesson 29: Gender shown by suffixes

By far the largest number of gender words are those marked by suffixes. In this particular the native endings have been largely supplanted by foreign suffixes.

The native suffixes to indicate the feminine were -en and -ster. These remain in vixen and spinster, though both words have lost their original meanings.

The word vixen was once used as the feminine of fox by the Southern-English. For fox they said vox; for from they said vram; and for the older word fat they said vat, as in wine vat. Hence vixen is for fyxen, from the masculine fox.

Spinster is a relic of a large class of words that existed in Old and Middle English, but have now lost their original force as feminines. The old masculine answering to spinster was spinner; but spinster has now no connection with it.

The foreign suffixes are of two kinds:

(1) Those belonging to borrowed words, as czarina, señorita, executrix, donna. These are attached to foreign words, and are never used for words recognized as English.

(2) That regarded as the standard or regular termination of the feminine, -ess (French esse, Low Latin issa), the one most used. The corresponding masculine may have the ending -er (-or), but in most cases it has not. Whenever we adopt a new masculine word, the feminine is formed by adding this termination -ess.

Sometimes the -ess has been added to a word already feminine by the ending -ster; as seam-str-ess, song-str-ess. The ending -ster had then lost its force as a feminine suffix; it has none now in the words huckster, gamester, trickster, punster.

Lesson 30

The ending -ess is added tomany words without changing the ending of the masculine; as,

• baron—baroness
• count—countess
• lion—lioness
• Jew—Jewess
• heir—heiress
• host—hostess
• priest—priestess
• giant—giantess

The masculine ending may be dropped before the feminine -ess is added; as,

• abbot—abbess
• negro—negress
• murderer—murderess
• sorcerer—sorceress

The feminine may discard a vowel which appears in the masculine; as in

• actor—actress
• master—mistress
• benefactor—benefactress
• emperor—empress
• tiger—tigress
• enchanter—enchantress

Empress has been cut down from emperice(twelfth century) and emperesse (thirteenth century), from Latin imperatricem.

Master and mistress were in Middle English maister—maistresse, from the Old French maistre—maistresse.

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