English Language & Usage Asked by SegNerd on March 13, 2021
Lion, tiger, panther, and leopard have female forms: lioness, tigress, pantheress, leopardess, but jaguar, puma, cheetah, and cougar don’t.
Jagress? Pumess? Cheetess? Cougress? Those aren’t words.
Is there any explanation as to why those two sets are different?
Mostly because -ess was not productive in English for animals, only for humans. The OED says (s.v. -ess): "In English the suffix is not used to form feminines of names of animals: lioness, tigress being adoptions from French".
This is not entirely correct: its own account of the etymology of pantheress and leopardess does not mention a French origin; but it is clearly mostly true.
The other point, connected with this, is to do with the age of the word in English. All the words which have an -ess form were in English before 1400, and apart from pantheress, their feminine forms were recorded by 1611.
According to the OED:
In contrast:
Correct answer by Colin Fine on March 13, 2021
Pantheress is a word according to M-W. It is much more common to hear “female panther” or “female cougar”.
Only “lioness” is in common usage. There is no law dictating why it is so, but most likely because the species has captivated Western civilization like no other big cat.
Answered by RealYZ on March 13, 2021
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