These remain in _vixen_ and _spinster_, though both words have lost
their original meanings.

The word _vixen_ was once used as the feminine of _fox_ by the
Southern-English. For _fox_ they said _vox_; for _from_ they said
_vram_; and for the older word _fat_ they said _vat_, as in _wine
vat_. Hence _vixen_ is for _fyxen_, from the masculine _fox_.

_Spinster_ is a relic of a large class of words that existed in Old
and Middle English,[1] but have now lost their original force as
feminines. The old masculine answering to _spinster_ was _spinner_;
but _spinster_ has now no connection with it.

The foreign suffixes are of two kinds:--

[Sidenote: _Foreign suffixes. Unaltered and little used._]

(1) Those belonging to borrowed words, as _czarina_, _señorita_,
_executrix_, _donna_. These are attached to foreign words, and are
never used for words recognized as English.

[Sidenote: _Slightly changed and widely used._]

(2) That regarded as the standard or regular termination of the
feminine, _-ess_ (French _esse_, Low Latin _issa_), the one most used.
The corresponding masculine may have the ending _-er_ (_-or_), but in
most cases it has not. Whenever we adopt a new masculine word, the
feminine is formed by adding this termination _-ess_.

Sometimes the _-ess_ has been added to a word already feminine by the