The mystery of the attendee

Think about the relationship between the words "employer" and "employee". This is the relationship that I think of as being the natural one - the employee is employed by the employer.

It follows the French pattern, because the "e" with an accent (to show that it is pronounced as a separate syllable) is common as an ending on the past participle - so the French employé means "employed". The payee in a banking transaction gets paid and an addressee is addressed, so they get something sent to them.

Now take the word "attendee". Why did this one go wrong? Why don't we use the word "attender", which is what it means? An attendee is someone who attends something, not someone who is attended. Do you know of any other words that have "gone wrong" like attendee?

A recent addition to the language is the word "mentee". This is odd for a different reason. A mentor is not someone who ments. If mentors were called advisers, the people they advised would be advisees. Perhaps we will start talking about menting each other and having menting sessions. Why not?

Comments

• However, although the relationship between a mentor and mentee is not “menting”, that between a coach and coachee is coaching, between trainer and trainee is training. On the other hand a speaker doing a talk is speaking but not to “speakees” . So it seems like there are no rules, just some things that work and somthings that don’t - must check what my mentor things about that next time i meet him for some menting.

  By Liam Mifsud on 2008 12 02

• What about referee? According to my rather old Concise Oxford Dictionary a referee is someone to whom something or someone is referred for decision, rather than someone who is referred. .The ‘ee’ suffix seems to have various applications

  By Cathy Swift on 2009 06 19

• We already have the answer in that a mentor is someone who mentors, perhaps in a mentoring session. I feel that menting is just lazy, having left out the “or”. It would, I suppose, therefore follow that one who is mentored is a mentoree!

  By Mike Ker on 2010 04 14