Talk:-rix

“-rix” is not a responsible entry
I'm not sure what kind of suffixes are used to indicate gendered nouns in Latin, if there are any at all, but I'm almost 100% sure that "-rix" is not a responsible entry. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by VitaminN (talk • contribs) 15:42, 27 August 2008 (UTC)


 * The suffixes -or: and -rix: form masculine and feminine agent nouns as a rule in Latin, and the process is also semi-productive in English (and probably fully productive for when forming epicene agent nouns). This is a fact, period. What possible reason could you have to dispute this?


 * BTW, please sign your posts on talk pages and in other discussion fora with four tildes (4 × ‘~’). Thanks. †  ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 16:03, 27 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree and think the article should be split into 1. Latin nouns with -rix, 2. English genuine formations. --Diligent 17:08, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

RFM discussion: October 2014–October 2016
Should be: -trix

While -or does seem to be a real agent suffix, -rix doesn't really exist. As it turns out, the main masculine agent suffix in Latin is -tor, and -trix is the feminine counterpart. As far as I can tell, there are no Latin agent nouns that end in -rix except those ending in -trix. That's why the Latin section at -rix was moved to -trix some time ago.

For those who might think that English is different, look at the dozens of derived terms in the -rix entry, and in Category:English words suffixed with -rix, and you will be struck by an amazing "coincidence": the last letter before the "suffix" is always "t". Chuck Entz (talk) 06:17, 16 October 2014 (UTC)


 * What about, , and ? — I.S.M.E.T.A. 20:58, 16 October 2014 (UTC)


 * I did miss those, but do three rare words (I doubt the last two even meet CFI) disprove the overwhelming pattern shown by everything else? I would call those modification by analogy with the all the -trix forms, which may well result in eventual reanalysis of -trix into t + -rix if the whole class of feminine agent nouns don't disappear first.


 * Well, those three formations are undeniably formed with ; but can you show me any that were undeniably formed with in English (they have to be terms that definitely weren't borrowed, and in which the t was not part of the word to which the -trix was suffixed)? — I.S.M.E.T.A. 17:42, 13 January 2015 (UTC)


 * No foolin' about Latin, Chuck? I always assumed that, in Latin, the "t" was from the past participle. But this Lewis and Short search shows that past participles with stems ending in "s" form a female agent word by adding "-trix" to the stem, even when "-or" forms the male agent. DCDuring TALK 21:47, 16 October 2014 (UTC)


 * That's because the cluster -sr- is not allowed by Latin. The -t- could simply be considered an epenthetic consonant. —CodeCat 23:28, 16 October 2014 (UTC)


 * I thought about that too, but -sr- becomes -br- in Latin ( < *funesris), not -str-. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 06:02, 17 October 2014 (UTC)


 * It's probably more correct to say that -tor (originally -tōr, as still in the noun stem) is originally a PIE-derived agentive suffix which is added to the same weak grade of verb as the past participle, hence it was reanalyzed as past participle + -or. This would mean that -trix is a real ending, formed from the weak grade of -tōr (-tr) + feminine ending -īk-. This would mean that the original formation would have either *-strīk- (added to a root ending in -s) or *-ttrīk- (added to a root ending in -d or -t). Unclear what the resolution of *-ttr- is in Latin but *-str- is a possibility. Even if the regular resolution is *-br-, that would have been reformed by analogy to something like *-str-; extensive analogy has applied to Latin morphology at various stages. Benwing (talk) 07:06, 17 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Exactly. Strange things tend to happen to dental stops in Latin around other dental stops and/or s. I think there's no question that / is the main source for Latin agent nouns ending in -or, including many with no explicit t, and that is its feminine form. The PIE pedigree for these forms is quite solid- this isn't something I just dreamed up (see  and ). Chuck Entz (talk) 08:13, 17 October 2014 (UTC)


 * The affricate -ts-, which resulted from PIE -tˢt- and -ts-, was preserved at least into post-Proto-Italic times, because different Italic languages have different outcomes of final -ns, -nts and -nt (see Proto-Italic). Furthermore, the combination -sr- was really -zr- (like in ), so there was no danger of merging. I suppose it's possible that -tsr- > -str- is a regular development, but it's also possible that the split dates to post-PIE, with -tˢt- > -ts- normally but -tˢtr- developing to -str- rather than -tsr-. —CodeCat 13:16, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

This discussion has been going on for nearly two years. Now closing as resulting in no consensus. — I.S.M.E.T.A. 20:01, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

Not a Latin suffix
As pointed out above, "-rix" is NOT a Latin suffix (there's only a sequence of three suffixes -tor-ic-s, which shows up as "-trix" in the nominative singular, while -tor-ic- becomes "-tric- in other case/number forms). And it's kind of doubtful whether "-rix" is an English suffix, either.  All the forms currently given on this page actually end in "-trix", except for the hardly common "ambassadrix" and the completely bogus "callithrix" (which I will be removing immediately).  One place where a -rix suffix actually does show up is in Celtic names rendered into Latin (Vercingetorix and such), where it means "king"... AnonMoos (talk) 10:34, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

RFM discussion: October 2020–March 2024
There was a discussion about this in 2014 which was closed (in 2016) after little input, but: should this be -trix? The only word listed as a derivative of this which is not -trix is ambassadrix, and viewing it as containing a suffix *"-rix" while simultaneously viewing ambassadress as containing "-ess" is not consistent anyway (why not view it as -ix, at that point? or more compellingly, as a blend influenced by -trix?). Perhaps if there were two more "-rix"es, it could suggest "-rix" had become an alternative form derived from -trix (although again, the lack of a verb *ambassade makes viewing ambassadrix as *ambassade suffixed with -rix rather than ambassador blended with -trix questionable), but the main form appears to be -trix. (Or, actually, the main process by which English acquires -(t)rix words appears to be borrowing directly from Latin without the application of any suffix in English in the first place.) No? - -sche (discuss) 03:00, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
 * There may be some cases where the term doesn't exist in Latin. Either way, this page should be moved to -trix. Ultimateria (talk) 22:25, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree, merge into -trix. - excarnateSojourner (talk | contrib) 06:11, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Finally merged. The majority of claimed derivations of "-rix" were words borrowed from Latin and not suffixed with any English suffix at all. The rest were all -trix, apart from ambassadrix. fr.Wikt might or might not want to also update their own corresponding "English words suffixed with -rix" category. - -sche (discuss) 20:48, 29 March 2024 (UTC)