[Sidenote:  Native 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,[1] 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:—­

[Sidenote:  Foreign suffixes.  Unaltered and little used.]

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

[Sidenote:  Slightly changed and widely used.]

(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.

[Sidenote:  Ending of masculine not changed.]

30.  The ending _-ess_ is added to many 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

[Sidenote:  Masculine ending dropped.]

The masculine ending may be dropped before the feminine _-ess_ is added; as,—­

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

[Sidenote:  Vowel dropped before adding -ess.]

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.