A female competitor, using the Latin feminine form ending in -trix rather than the -tress variant.
From Latin competere (to strive together) + -trix (Latin feminine agent suffix). The -trix ending is the original Latin form, while -tress is the Anglicized version; both competed in English for dominance before falling largely out of use.
The existence of both 'competitrix' and 'competitress' shows how English borrowed from Latin directly (-trix) versus through French (-tress), creating parallel forms that confused speakers and eventually lost favor. It's like linguistic fossils—we keep them in dictionaries to remember how people once talked about women in competition.
Latin feminine form of 'competitor.' Similar to -ress, this construction marks female competitors as a special case, implying maleness as the default.
Avoid. Use 'competitor' universally.
["competitor"]
Women's participation in competition was historically notable enough to require linguistic marking — a sign of how normalized male participation was.
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