Newsgroup: it.cultura.linguistica.inglese
Titolo: Vampire Batress

I awoke one morning with a mark on the back of my neck
and declared to my wife that I was sharing my mattress
with a vampire batress.
This got me to wondering what other words, when you add
"ress" to the end, indicate the feminine gender.
Bat is the only one I can think of, yet anyone hearing this
would have understood it, wouldn't they?
So can anyone think of similar words?
Rick

 So can anyone think of similar words?
Actress.

 would have understood it, wouldn't they?
I believe the actual suffix indicating a feminine gender is just -ess,
though it may sometimes be preceeded by an 'r', as in actress, tigress,
waitress, mistress, temptress and others.
I suppose your word would just sound like one of those feminines to an
English speaker and be thus understood.
Max


Consulting my Fowler's again... the oldest are from French
countess
duchess
empress
hostess
lioness
mistress
princess
Then the rule was applied to other words
adulteress
waitress
actress
sorceress
goddess
songstress
temptress
priestess
There are many others that are less common or outdated. e.g.
poetess
adventuress
sculptress
tigress
And many are listed in Fowlers that, frankly, sound ridiculous.
I believe that these were rare even before they became obsolete e.g.
farmeress
entertainess
philosopheress
J


Good list.  I notice your examples, in their masculine form, all end in r,
so perhaps the original suffix was 'ess', but the vowell precedeing the r
is omitted.
I think you're right, it's the sound of 'ress' that conveys the intent,
but
if you're going to make up words like I did, it really doesn't sound right
with just any old word.  I don't think I could say foxress, for instance,
and have that understood.
Funny thing is, bat doesn't end with an r, and if I had said batess, it
wouldn't
have sounded right.  This really seems to be something that you play be
ear.
But I digress.
Rick

 Actress.
This word is now purposely not used by people in the acting profession in the
US, who now prefer the word "actor" for both genders.
Ciao,
Ron
USA


actress
seamstress
-- 
Dale Erwin
http://home.earthlink.net/~erwintech

with a vampire batress.
Those Anne Rice stories you've been reading are really getting to you, aren't
they?
bye
arianna

 seamstress
This one doesn't have a male root word.
Seamster would conjure up something more like
a union of sewers you don't want to be the president of.
Sewers, people who sew.  (Not the places where rats live.
No one has attempted to organize them yet :-))
Rick

 with a vampire batress.
It is reported that the number of battered husbands is
growing quite steadily.
Whether vampire bats or rather 'wompire battresses' are
responsible for that appears to be a matter for debate.
Matteo B.

> Matteo B.
Ehi, Matt, non ho capito una cosa: ma tu sei il Matteo che nei giorni scorsi
mi ha fermato per strada qui a Venezia?

 wrote:

The correct suffix is definitely '-ess' rather than '-ress'.
The reason 'batress' sounds fine here is the rhyme with
'matress'. Inventing a word or mangling spelling in order to force a
rhyme is something that (humorous poet) Ogden Nash did quite frequently.
J

>From: "Ron" 
ron_...@hotmail.com
 

Yes, "actress" is VERY politically incorrect (personally I think they carried
this thing a little too far)
bye
Ari

Matteo B. <matte...@NOSPAMlibero.it> wrote in message
9Oj57.942$VO5....@news.infostrada.it...

Dear Matteo,
I guess that some umpire battress can be spotted during a heaten softball
inning, but, pray tell, what is a wompire battress ? A thug-girl from the
Woman Empire ?
Partly LOL and partly puzzled
Giorgio

 che nei giorni scorsi mi ha fermato per strada qui a Venezia?
No. Fra le altre cose, non so nemmeno che faccia hai.
Ciao

 Partly LOL and partly puzzled
Should my attempt at humour still sound pretty cryptic to you,
I cannot but declare myself entirely puzzled.
Ciao
Matteo B.
* A legal definition.
P.S. Can a batter (or a "battress", for that matter) be an umpire
at a softball match? I always thought umpires were not allowed
to be directly involved in the game as players. Or perhaps now
it is I who can't quite grasp the meaning of your humorous
remarks?

 Rick
yeah - distress - at the thought of even more unnecessary words added
to the English lexicon.
Loki
finesse not quantity
-- 
 

 finesse not quantity
May I suggest that you eat a French croissant rather than toast for
breakfast?
Matteo B.

 growing quite steadily.
Battering has taken a frytening turn for the worst. A few years ago there was a
report in the SF Bay Area of a man who battered his wife with a raw tuna while
in a public parking lot. He had just purchased the fish and let's hope that it
was adequately wrapped so that chips did not go flying off during the sizzling
encounter. A couple of weeks later there was a copycat crime with a frozen
version. Even less amusing.
Ciao,
Ron
USA


That was delicious.
Rick

 - Battress: feminine form of 'batterer' 
[snip]
I'm not a fan of these 'ess' words but get it right if you must play
with them.
 It has to be 'batteress' or even 'battereress'  because 'to batter'
is the verb form from which this word comes, not 'to bat'. In this
way a batter is someone uses a bat, be it cricket, softball, or some
other game. 
'To batter', on the other hand, could be 'to beat up, damage', or
else 'to cover in tempura/ flour, water mix as in battered fish. 
There's even a more unusual meaning of giving an upward slope to
something, but we'll ignore that for now.
Cheers,
Loki



The last thing I need a piece of pastry that is 50% butter! Infatto,
mangio il toast senza il burro. <sigh>  but I make up for it with
peanut butter. <hehe>
Loki
Grazie a dio per il olio d'oliva...
-- 
 

 remarks?
Even if I played baseball in my youth, I can't give you any clue about this
particular rule.
'Umpire battress' was intended in the sense that the battress was
particularly fond of hitting the umpire.
For what concern cricket, all my informations come from the novel 'Mike' by
P.G. Wodehouse, that let me under the impression that hitting an umpire is
considered extremely inappropriate.
Ciao e grazie per le spiegazioni
Giorgio

I'm not a fan of these 'ess' words...
How peculiar. How's that? I'm asking sincerely, not flame-baiting you
of course. Because personally, I'm really fond of them; not only I
find them really useful - at least for as long as gender difference
will be there :-) -, but I quite like the special sound of actress,
waitress, seamstress etc. I'd even go for cookess and manageress if it
were allowed (although I can see that "attorneyess" or "solicitress"
sound quite implausible, even if Agent's spell-check says that
solicitress is a legit word. How about "solicitrix"?) I really like
the idea of a special suffix for females, anyway, and resent the PC
habit of calling Julia Roberts an actor. 
Off my chest, I guess :-)
-- 
Isa
Work like you don't need money,
Love like you've never been hurt,
And dance like no one's watching
http://web.tiscalinet.it/alfabeto_auschwitz/

>I'm really fond of them;
You're a real ogress.

habit of
calling Julia Roberts an actor.
Too late to invent manageress; it seems
to exist already.
Those names ending in -ix sound a lot like the
characters in Asterix and Obelix, don’t they? They have a nice ring to
them, though.
A lot of previously gender-specific names for professions
seem to get "neutered". Only yesterday, I explained to someone how the
stewardess, later an air hostess, today is a flight attendant.
Could it
be because in some parts of the world, calling a woman by a female gender-
specific name is tantamount to sexual harassment, which would indicate that
women themselves take exception to being called by these names?
--
Xakero
--------------------------------
Inviato via 
http://usenet.iol.it
 

Loki <lo...@asgard.nz.invalido> generously lavished her finest pearls
of wisdom on me
[...]
Yes, of course.
Thanks a lot.
Matteo B.

 Grazie a dio per il olio d'oliva...
Sě, ma anche per la pasta con la pummarola, e le lasagne
(solo quelle col ragů di magro, perň), e l'espresso...
Matteo B.

 version. Even less amusing.
As this post shows only too well, there are lots of fishy guys around.
That's far from amusing.
Ciao
Matteo B.


Maybe I've really fallen out of the loop since I retired, but this thread
bears the first mention I have heard of the trend toward "actor" for all
whether male or female.  I still don't think when the time comes for me
to use the word, that I would call a woman an actor.


 considered extremely inappropriate.
I don't think that hitting a player would be considered extremely
appropriate either. :-)
Ciao
Matteo B.

> there are lots of fishy guys around.
Including the fishy reporter, of course.

women themselves take exception to being called by these names?
Men, women, we all have the same problem-- paying more attention to
the labels than the content. I wouldn't give a proverbial that I'm
called with a gender-specific job title, as long as I get equal pay
and status, but more often than not "neutering" names is just a coat
of paint over the old discrepancies.
I'm just waiting for the day when HRH the Queen of England's daughter
gets called "Price Anne" just like her brothers :-)


 gets called "Price Anne" just like her brothers :-)
Her brothers are called "Prince Anne" ?????


<<Dominatrix>>, too? Gotcha :-)
Reminds me of the time when a (female)
collegue of mine, upon hearing that I was travelling to London, UK, asked
me to bring her a T-shirt printed with London's famous double-deck red bus
and the caption "I like to be on top". Had some trouble finding said
article, I recall, and never found out, or bothered to find out, whether
she meant that slogan to refer to travelling by bus, or perhaps the other,
rather different thing.


Her brothers are called "Prince Anne"?????
I take it you're not in on the little private habits of the
Royal&Famous. Oh well. I won't see you at Ascot then :-)


 Roberts an actor.  Off my chest, I guess :-)
So italian, you know. :-))))) I do believe it was the actors who
resented being singled out. Words are not just meaning, but cultural
information as well.
 I managed to lose Xakero's post, but I believe he was correct in
assuming it had something to do with women's struggle for equality.
Many of those words had  ess tacked on and carried a subtle put down
with their use.
Cheers,
Loki

 Isa
Priceless comment really. ;-))
-- 
 

Priceless comment really. ;-))
That's just a typo, a typo, a typo, and you're wicked, wicked, WICKED!
:-)))


 :-)))
any time sweetie :-))
Loki
-- 
 

 >> gets called "Prince Anne" just like her brothers :-)
A proposito, vi sembra esagerato tradurre "bartendress" con "baristessa"?
:-) Mi è capitato oggi.
--
Ciao
Anna