Word.ws English Dictionary

-esses

-esses is the plural of -ess.

Meaning of -ess

Suffix (1)

-ess (noun-forming suffix, plural -esses)

  1. Used to form female equivalents.
    • actor + -ess → actress
    Synonyms:
    -a, -ette, -ine, -ress, she-, -trix
    Antonyms:
    he-
  2. The wife of.
    • alderman + -ess → aldermaness (“alderman’s wife”)

Suffix (2)

-ess

  1. (idiomatic) Used to form nouns from adjectives.

Suffix (3)

-ess

  1. (idiomatic) Used to form proper nouns from nouns.

Questions about -esses

What is -esses the plural of?
-esses is the plural of -ess.

Words near -esses in the dictionary

  1. -ese
  2. -esis
  3. -esque
  4. -ess
  5. -esse
  6. -esses
  7. -est
  8. -estan
  9. -esthesia
  10. -esthesis
  11. -estr-

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: -esses (page history and authors); -ess (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “-esses.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/-esses. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.