Comedienne

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A female professional who brings humor to audiences through performance art and comedic writing
2. A woman who entertains by performing humorous acts or telling jokes
3. A female entertainer whose work is focused on making people laugh through comedy

Etymology: French "comédienne" is the feminine form of "comédien," an actor, and it carries the same core idea as the English "comedy" that it is built from. The word reached English as a borrowing from French, and the "-ienne" ending is the feminine marker that French attaches to many nouns of this kind. English speakers met the pattern again in "doyenne," the feminine of "doyen," which is why the two words sit side by side as examples of the same construction. The ending does the real work here. In French, a masculine noun for a performer or professional is often given a feminine twin by swapping its ending, so "comédien" for an actor of either sex became "comédienne" when the performer was a woman. English kept the French shape rather than adding a plain suffix of its own, so the word carries a visible trace of French grammar in its spelling.

Synonyms: female comedian