editrix

[Jonathan Lighter]

But not as funny. "Editricial" isn't in OED either.  I'd accept as an alternate form. Especially as a noun.

  "Editress" is dated to 1799 by OED, but here's one from nearly a generation earlier:

  1775 John Bicknell _Musical Travels through England_ (London: G. Kearsly) 78: Which circumstance his fair editress has thought too interesting to the public to expunge it from her usefull collection.

  EEBO offers no 18th C. "editrixes" (or "edictrixials" or "editricials"). "Editress" might be preferred, being the primary form in English, but it sports the vile "-ess" suffix, making it apriorically phallologocentric except in "The Goddess," i.e., The Creatrix (OED 1595 in a secular sense).

  "Creatress" (obviously an impossible choice) was used as early as 1590 by Edmund Spenser (a known phallophore).

  JL


  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Wilson Gray
Subject: Re: editrix
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

But wouldn't the adjectival form be "editricial," based on the Latin
stem and not the whole Latin word?

On 11/3/06, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Jonathan Lighter
> Subject: editrix
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> This is old stuff to OED (1845), but I'd never encountered it in real life till _Catherine Crier Live_ on Court TV just flashed this caption: "Seventeen Editrix Teams Up with Myspace to Promote Safety."
>
> No OED entry for "editrixial," adj. & n.
>
> JL
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


--
Everybody says, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange
complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is knows how deep
a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our
race. He brought death into the world.

--Sam Clemens

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



---------------------------------
We have the perfect Group for you. Check out the handy changes to Yahoo! Groups.

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org