[Lexicog] mentee/mentoree

[Benjamin Barrett]

The normal formation is to add -er/-or to get the person doing it and 
add -ee to the receiver of the action. So employ-> employer, employee, 
address -> addresser, addressee. There isn't a verb for mentor, but 
using back formation you get: mentor <- ment and then ment -> mentee. BB

Fritz Goerling wrote:
>
> I discussed with David Frank, an SIL colleague on this list, whether 
> ”mentee” or “mentoree” is more common. As he encouraged me to present 
> this issue to the lex-list, here is what he wrote:
>
> “First of all, the word "mentoree" was new to me. I realize that there 
> is a lacuna in the English language, where a good word does not seem 
> to be available for such an important concept. I have heard "mentee" 
> used before, which doesn't sound quite natural to me either. I am not 
> sure what other term ought to be used. Since training is not my 
> specialty, I decided to do a Google search to find out how widely the 
> term "mentoree" is used, and also "mentee." The term "mentoree" 
> returned only 31,100 hits and "mentee" returned 801,000 hits, which 
> would seem to indicate to me that the latter is the more 
> widely-accepted term. But feel free to ask others. I only suggest that 
> you ask people outside your local circle, since "mentoree" might have 
> become normalized as a sort of local dialectal term that is not so 
> widely known elsewhere. … neither of them seems to me to be a good 
> English word.”
>
> In training circles, I have heard “mentoree” more than “mentee” but 
> probably David is right. From the point of view of word formation, 
> “mentoree” as a derivation which shows where the word comes from, viz. 
> “mentor” seems more natural to me.
>

>
>  




 
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