-ess
suffix ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Used to form female equivalents. morpheme
"actor + -ess → actress"
- 2 Used to form nouns from adjectives. idiomatic, morpheme
- 3 Used to form proper nouns from nouns. idiomatic, morpheme
- 4 The wife of. morpheme
"alderman + -ess → aldermaness (“alderman’s wife”)"
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"duke + -ess → duchess (“female ruler of a duchy”)"
Etymology
From Middle English -esse, borrowed from Old French -esse, from Late Latin -issa, from Ancient Greek -ισσα (-issa). Displaced Old English -en (feminine suffix of nouns).
From Old French -esse, from Latin -itia.
From Middle English -eis, a borrowing from Old French -eis, a locative suffix descended from Latin -ensis. The French and Middle English suffixes created nouns describing a freeman of a fortified town, but in Modern English this is found only in proper nouns, particularly in certain surnames. Cognates include Italian -ese, and English English -ese is a doublet.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.