Saturday 4 July 2020

freëst

My auto-correct function believes the superlative adjectival form of free is the double rather than triple e version favoured it seems by others, and while I would probably avoid either and employ more and most free—say nothing of wee or twee—there are probably instances where it would be useful (I use soonest in the right context often enough, my phone suggests it), it does seem somehow orthographically lacking somehow, as if one had not arrived at free‧er or free‧est and was instead conveying some archaic verbal form. What do you think? With all this talk of e’s, it’s interesting to draw in the suffixes –or as the actor and the object –ee as the receivee, expanded from the legal nomenclature of donor and donee in mentor and mentee and all its permutations, or denoting the empathised champion of the transitive action, as in trainee, abductee, insuree or purgee.