Actresses

How to spell actresses

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce actresses

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does actresses mean?

1. nounMore than one woman whose profession is performing in plays, films, or television.

Actresses in a sentence

• The two lead actresses rehearsed the closing scene together.

• Several well known actresses auditioned for the period drama.

Where does actresses come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the plural of 'actress', which was formed by adding the feminine suffix '-ess' to 'actor'. 'Actor' came into English in the late 1300s from the Latin actor, meaning 'one who does or drives something', a noun built on the verb agere, 'to do, to drive, to set in motion'. At first an actor in English was simply a doer or an agent, and only later, by the 1500s, did it settle into the theatrical sense of someone who plays a part on stage. The '-ess' ending arrived through Old French '-esse' (from Late Latin '-issa'), the same feminine marker seen in words like 'waitress' and 'hostess'. When the suffix '-ess' is added to a word ending in 'r' plus a vowel sound, the result doubles the 's', and forming the plural then adds '-es', which is exactly the stacked-letter pattern that makes 'actresses' easy to fumble.

How the word is built

• act (root: from Latin agere, to do or perform)
• -ress (feminine agent suffix)
• -es (plural)