I recently came across the word scooterette in an Indian newspaper. I wondered if this is an Indian coinage; a quick search on Google showed me it's almost purely Indian. I could not find a reliable dictionary reference, but this article says these scooterettes are scooters manufactured specifically for women.
What is the reason this suffix "-ette" is used to refer to a female? Are there other nouns which become feminine by this addition? Or is this just some neologist's portmanteau of scooter and dudette?
Best Answer
The -ette suffix is normally applied to women, not objects designed specifically for women. Thus suffragette, your dudette, usherette and the like. The French language uses -ette to feminise names: Paul/Paulette, Claude/Claudette, etc., and the same principle is used to feminise some nouns in English to create a female variant.
By extension it can also mean "small", cigarette, novelette, Nissan's Vanette and so on. These aren't female, or specially for women.
It's not normally used to create a noun like scooterette meaning "a scooter for women", although perhaps it's simply a smaller scooter which happens to appeal to women (and not men, so it's ridden exclusively by women).