Learn English – Why are words like “actor” and “waiter” considered male

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What is it about words like "actor" and "waiter" that causes them to be considered male, so that they have female counterparts (i.e. "actress" and "waitress")?

Why are they not gender-neutral like "doctor" or "nurse" or "manager"?

Best Answer

Latin has auctor which gave English author. Another example is senator. The suffix -tor was used for male persons. A variant of -tor is Latin -ter as in pater (father). The o in -or was weakened to e. For female persons Latin had a special suffix -trix from -torix as in genetrix, victrix.

The suffix -trix, genitive -tricis, accusative -tricem became -tresse in French as in maîtresse and -tress in English as in waitress.

Why are there words such as doctor, teacher, student that can be used for male and female persons? Well, languages aren't designed at the drawing board and some words were taken in their Latin or French form, others were used for both sexes without a special ending which is not impractical.

A language has a development of thousand years and more and especially in word formation there are often several systems due to various origins.