The building blocks of English
Affixes
-stress
A female person associated with a specific activity.
The most common examples here are seamstress, a woman who sews, especially one who earns her living by sewing; and mistress (actually formed from Old French maistresse, from maistre, master). The same considerations of gender that are working against words in ‑ess apply here and no new examples are being created using it; however, some remain in active use, such as headmistress and songstress.
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