-ee
a suffix forming from transitive verbs nouns which denote a person who is the object or beneficiary of the act specified by the verb (addressee; employee; grantee); recent formations now also mark the performer of an act, with the base being an intransitive verb (escapee; returnee; standee) or, less frequently, a transitive verb (attendee) or another part of speech (absentee; refugee).
-ee
suffix
indicating a person who is the recipient of an action (as opposed, esp in legal terminology, to the agent, indicated by -or or -er) -ssignee, grantee, lessee
indicating a person in a specified state or condition absentee, employee
indicating a diminutive form of something bootee
word origin
via old french -e, -ee, past participial endings, from latin -ātus, -āta-ate1
-ee
in legal english (and in imitation of it), represents the anglo-fr. -é ending of pps. used as nouns. as these sometimes were coupled with agent nouns in -or, the two suffixes came to be used as a pair to denote the initiator and the recipient of an action.
-ee
suffix
used to form nouns the object of what is indicated: baby-sittee/ kickee/ muggee
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-een anglicized form of fr. -in, -ine, ultimately from l. -inus -ina.
- -eer
a noun-forming suffix occurring originally in loanwords from french (buccaneer; mutineer; pioneer) and productive in the formation of english nouns denoting persons who produce, handle, or are otherwise significantly -ssociated with the referent of the base word (auctioneer; engineer; mountaineer; pamphleteer); now frequently pejorative (profiteer; racketeer). compare -ary, -er2 , -ier2 . -eer suffix (forming […]
- -ein
-ein suff. a chemical compound related to a specified compound with a similar name ending in -in or -ine: phthalein.
- -ella
a suffix used as a formative in taxonomic names, especially genus names of bacteria: ch-r-lla; pasteurella; salmonella.
- -elle
a noun suffix occurring in loanwords from french, where it originally formed diminutives, now often with a derivative sense in which the diminutive force is lost (bagatelle; prunelle; rondelle); also in anglicized forms of latin words ending in -ella (organelle).