Mind your language
`PERHAPS', said the leading article (31 January), 'some of the focus group attendees who told the Prime Minister that reform was necessary will be invited back.' This sowed doubts in the mind of Jill Morgan of Newland, near Ulverston, which I used to think was in Lancashire but which now seems to be in Cumbria.
Her doubts were not about the wis- dom of the leader (heaven forbid), but about the word attendees. Ought it not to be (Menders? And, she finds, have not things come to a pretty pass when the spell-check on her Microsoft program actually proposes the -ees termination?
Stuffy old Fowler (whom we love real- ly, like a tweedy uncle) opines that the -ee formation is 'gratuitously confusing', especially when we have the perfectly good suffixes -er, -or, and -1st for the task. Bright new inclusive Fowler, edit- ed by R.W. Burchfield, actually men- tions attendee along with escapee, evacuee and addressee as words that have unpacked their bags for a long stay.
Can we object, when Laurence Sterne in the 18th century was busy coining the word jestee, as one jested to or at. This is something of a locus classicus, being cited also by the OED. It comes right at the beginning of the 12th chapter of Volume I in Tristram Shandy: 'The Mortgage and Mortgagee differ the one from the other, not more in length of purse, than the Jester and the Jestee do, in that of memory.' Sterne was playing with words, but his (or the printer's) use of the acute accent correctly suggests the French origin of the suffix.
The confusing element is the meaning of mortgager and mortgagee. The mort- gagee is the bank or building society; the mortgager (or in legal spelling, even though the g is soft, mortgagor) is the mug such as you or I.
Having got over that hurdle, we dis- cover all sorts of words (bootee, bargee, Chinee) with an -ee termination of dif- ferent or unknown origin. Then came a rash of 20th-century examples like amputee or examinee. Some I dislike, such as standee, an American word for a standing passenger. But if attendee is good enough for that nice Mr Blair, it's good enough for me.
Dot Wordsworth
Previous page
