Question

Identify the feminine form of the noun: benefactor
A) benefactress
B) benefactrina
C) benefactoress
D) benefactrine

Answer 1

Hint: Nouns can be used to dictate the gender of a person or animal. Masculine and feminine nouns are used to indicate gender related nouns and differentiate them accordingly. Even so, there are many nouns that are gender neutral such as dancer, doctors and hairdressers. Feminine nouns can be formed through two main ways, namely,
Adding –ess to the masculine form
Adding she / woman / girl to the masculine form.
Professions are considered to be gender neutral and can refer to both male and female without discrimination. Many cases include where the nouns are not derived from the masculine noun such as boy and girl, brother and sister, buck and doe.
Here, the individual recognised as masculine is the benefactor. The question asked is the feminine form of the word, which is, for many words, -ress additions.

Complete solution:
Now, from the options given above,
benefactress: Is the feminine form of the masculine noun benefactor
benefactrina: there is no such word as benefactrina corresponding to the word benefactor.
Benefactoress: the word is non-existent.
Benefactrine: the word benefactrine is non-existent.

Hence, Option a, is the correct answer for the above question.



Note: Benefactoress can be confused with benefactress, but, the former word does not exist and the latter is formed by removing –or and adding –ress. Determining masculine and feminine nouns may seem a task. Most of the words have similar suffixes and they are easy to note.