Talking about Words: Presidentess
With Prof. Richard Bailey

When the Regents of the University of Michigan selected Mary Sue Coleman as the school’s 13th president, there was great rejoicing. Among the many causes for celebration was that she would be the first woman to hold that office.

Presidentess is not a term anybody thought to use in addressing her, and, as everyone knows, gender-specific titles are vanishing from the linguistic landscape. Waitress (and waiter) have merged as generic server. Actress holds on mainly because it is still used as one of the categories for “best” acting in the Academy Awards, but few people think it odd to say that “Meryl Streep is a wonderful actor.” Stewardess long ago vanished into flight attendant.

In general, we seem to want fewer –ess titles, not more, but that was not always so.

In May 1865, when the nation was reeling from the Lincoln assassination, an author in the most popular women’s magazine of the day, Godey’s Lady’s Book, cited heaps of –ess words she’d found, some of them very old like princess (which could be a woman monarch in her own right and not just the spouse of one).

She urged the use of even more –ess titles. Women teachers, this author observed, had proved to be the “most efficient agents,” and therefore it would be a good thing to introduce the title teacheress, so “efficient” women might be readily distinguished from mere (male) teachers. A parent seeing “Teacheress J. Avery” on a roster could go for the gold.

Women needed to be singled out, this writer declared. Though no women in Britain or the United States had yet achieved the rank of professor, they might do so in time—most likely, she thought, at Vassar College, established just four years earlier: “We hope they will not usurp the man’s title; but, following the analogies of our language, assume their own womanly style—Professoress.”

The writer felt free to invent new titles with –ess, and she was not alone in this impulse. That same year, 1865, a British traveler in Vermont reported seeing a sign offering the services of a physician: “Mrs. Doctress Lacese Smith.” “See what a woman can do,” declared this notice.

Doctress was listed in the Godey’s essay, and its author especially recommended presidentess, a term she thought she had created from her own imagination.

In fact, presidentess had been in the language since the end of the 18th century, and in America it was regularly used for the wife of a president. Dolly Madison had been the Presidentess when her husband had held the office, and, after she ceased living in the White House, Julia Tyler was known as the ex-presidentess. (Only with Lucy Hayes did first lady come into use.)

Presidentess as a title for a woman holding office emerged as part of Mormon nomenclature at the end of the 19th century, but the word has never had much of a grip on the national imagination—except, perhaps, for sneering irony attached to a woman who has the effrontery to be in charge of something! Sorceress has some currency in the Wiccan community, but except for princess these forms seem to have dropped down the memory hole into oblivion.

Hardly any –ess listings are to be found in the Dictionary of Occupational Titles maintained by the US Department of Labor. Many gender pairs are not taken very seriously nowadays: aviatrix and aviator, for instance; or dudette and dude.

What remains, however, is another problem: that is, what do you call a person whose status derives mainly from being a spouse?

Some time ago the University convened a meeting of its present and former “first ladies.” The term made some people uncomfortable, however, and resulted, most likely, in the fact that Vivian Shapiro and Anne Duderstadt are now given equal billing with former presidents Harold Shapiro and James Duderstadt on the buildings memorializing their years in the President’s House.

But how should we title Kenneth Coleman, husband of our current president?

It is theoretically possible to call him a Presidentesser but, practically, that’s ridiculous. Sidekick (originally Sidekicker) lacks gravitas. Significant Other, concocted to include same-gender intimates with spouses, probably has unwanted associations for the couple living at 815 South University Avenue, Ann Arbor.

So there remains a restiveness in the English vocabulary. Presidentess and First Lady sit uncomfortably on the page for spouses who are women. Spouses who are men and dwell with presidents are left in titular limbo.

Richard W. Bailey is the Fred Newton Scott Collegiate Professor of English. His most recent book is Rogue Scholar: The Sinister Life and Celebrated Death of Edward H. Rulloff, University of Michigan Press, 2003 - a biography of an American thief, impostor, murderer and would-be philologist who lived from 1820 to 1871. It was published by the University of Michigan Press in August.