Why are there gendered words for some professions like actor and actress but not e.g. doctor and doctress?
In: 1937
Because English is, frankly, a mess.
In essence, it’s a pidgin of four different language families all rolled together. Words rooted in those different languages each bring their own bits of grammar along for the ride… which then may be adhered to to varying degrees, discarded later, or even amalgamate with the rules from a similar word borrowed from another language.
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