Paperinika (Super Daisy) Returns

[Søren Krarup Olesen]

Rich wrote:
> "Michael Schartau" m_schartau at hotmail.com said:
>> Ther are not many words that have female "endings"in English. 
>> The ones that comes to my mind is lion/lioness, priest/priestess
>> and of course socerer/sorceress.
>> Accordingly Duck Avengeress or Duck Avengess would be fine. 
>> Technicaly the languages get new words all the time.
> 
> I don't disagree that you can tack on "-ess" to any noun and make is feminine,
> and yes the American English language is evolving all the time.  However, the
> word "Avengeress" *might* be fine from a purely technical standpoint, but it
> fails on several other levels... the two most basic being: 1) It's a made-up word
> that that doesn't need to be created when so many words are already available, 2)
> It doesn't have the essential "feel" of a good word for the application it is
> being specific to, namely Daisy's superhero monicker.   "Duck Avengeress" just
> doesn't roll off the tongue or settle in the mind comfortably.  Plus its not very
> clever.

Clever or not. This particular word *was* used in earler issues of
Websters. However, I wasn't able to find it in my version of the
"Webster's Encycl. Unabridged Dict." (1996). Check google.com, and
you'll se what I mean.

As to whether or not some term or word sounds good in *American* English
is hardly any measure for it's correctness :-)

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