Talk:conqueror

Conqueress

Don't you think the term conqueress should be redirected to and incorporated into this article, rather than having a completely separate page for it? For example, if a person wants to know what the definition of conqueress is and types it into the search bar, it would be informative to redirect them to the conqueror page and outline that conqueress is the female equivalent to the definition under the male-gendered term. It's better than tons of redlinks or no results at all, and actually helps to contextualise the word. 212.139.71.247 16:56, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

• No. Every word gets its own definition. Redlinks are our friends - they show us what words haven't been defined yet. SemperBlotto 17:32, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

True, but if some words are only very minor variations of a better known word but are more or less identical (especially if it's only a gender difference in terms i.e. -ess), is it really a good idea to isolate them on their own page where they are poorly or curtly defined? I think it would be better to redirect these words to their better-known related terms and make sure it is outlined on that page that, for example, conqueress is the fem. counterpart of conqueror. 212.139.71.247 17:59, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

I think it's important to note that in English, femalizations are not regular. For someone learning the language from scratch, the lone way to know what nouns have feminine forms, and how to conjugate the male forms to female, is rote memorization. If it were totally regular like in Esperanto, it might be worth it to give short treatment to female forms. But I think the irregularity of English is a large part of what makes the language beautiful :-) For that reason it's fun to see crazy words like conqueress Signed, Language Lover

In the history of the English language, feminised nouns are regular. An English dictionary is not to first and foremost teach non-English speakers how to speak contemporary English, but to catalogue every word that can be found in English vocabulary and literature. For example, despite the rare use of the word conqueress in the English language, if I was reading Shakespeare and came across the word and was puzzled as to what it meant, a dictionary should provide me with a lucid explanation. Also, to then be shown it's context with the male form conqueror would doubly aid my understanding. 212.139.66.41 00:08, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Are they really regular? I thought they weren't, though I could be mistaken. Consider conqueror and conqueress, bachelor and bachelorette, congressman and congresswoman. Besides conjugation issues, more importantly it seems that those conjugation rules only even apply to very specific, arbitrary words: for example, there is no such thing as a janitoress or janitess or janitette or etc (female janitor). Though, if I'm wrong, I sure hope you'll post the regular rules, since I would learn a ton from them :-) Signed, Language Lover

Reading the usage note about feminine noun forms on dictionary.com should help you: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/-ess. Gender specific nouns are gradually being worked out of the English language on grounds of sexism, especially in American English, but I don't think we're as bothered about it in Britain (e.g. we would probably just say "air hostess" or "stewardess" as opposed to "Flight Attendant", or "waitress" instead of "server"). However, words like janitoress (correctly spelt "janitress") or guardianess or traitoress etc actually do exist, but they are somewhat archaic now and wouldn't regularly be used by English-speakers today (though they still could be). So of course they should still be included in a dictionary in case someone reading old literature (Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens etc) comes across the word and wants to find out what it means. 212.139.114.163 18:08, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, is that true, that you can add "-ess" (or something very similar with minor inflection differences) to anything and make it female? What about congressmaness, cowboyess, bacheloress? Anyway, even if that's the case, a dictionary's purpose isn't to list all conceivable possible words (in some agglutinating languages, there would be infinitely many such), but to list words which people actually use. A look at books.google.com shows that conqueress has a ton of hits. By the way, I'd like to thank you for bringing my attention to janitress, it looks like you are right :) Somehow it never entered my lexicon until now :) But I still say there is a great deal of irregularity in female forms. Anyway, we have entries even for such things as regular plurals of nouns. I think that definitely justifies a separate entry for conqueress :-)

I don't agree with you about the purpose of dictionaries - a dictionary's purpose is to list every word a lexicographer can think of that actually exists, not just words that people use regularly or familiarly. A definition should still be provided for an unusual word like oratress or fostress, in case someone comes across it somewhere (most likely in pre-20th century literature) and needs to know what it means. With those words you suggested, the rule with "-ess" is that it is used with male nouns ending with -er or -or, e.g. songster = songstress, conductor = conductress. The words you suggested would become congresswoman, cowgirl and bachelorette, for the first 2 because they state "man" or "boy", which would have to be changed to "woman" or "girl". But I'm starting to think you're right about each word getting its own entry in the Wiktionary, as long as they don't become isolated and out of context. 212.139.81.161 02:31, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

I want to thank you for bringing my attention to a greater femalization regularity than I was aware of. It's not as regular as in, say, Esperanto (where to make *ANY* noun female (even when that doesn't make logical sense) you merely replace the final "o" with "ino") but it definitely has pattern, and is more regular than (say) the past tense of verbs.  :-) Going off on a tangent, it is interesting that with certain words, you can use either the original word or the female form for a female, whereas with others you can't: you can call a girl a conqueror, but you can't call her a waiter. Very interesting, I wonder what caused this :-) Excellent discussion on this talk page, I hope you share insight into other words here as well :-D (Signed, Language Lover)

Thanks for your kind attitude :D I wanted to tell you though that you can actually use a word like "waiter" for a female. Any noun ending in -er or -or is ok to use for a female as well as a male, especially since nowadays some people think it's sexist to use -ess. However, it is true that waitress is a more popular word to use for a woman than waiter, but you could use either. But you cannot use a noun ending in -man for a female (e.g. congressman, businessman), because it would be like calling a woman a man! You would have to say businesswoman, congresswoman etc. 80.47.33.122 23:12, 14 March 2007 (UTC)