| Well, for one thing, both words are derived from Middle French *nouns*.
The "-ee" ending was originally the masculine for the past particple of
French *verbs*. In general, the "-ee" ending is used in the sense of
"the reciepient of an action", as in: an employee is "one who is employed".
Granted, a "pensionee" might be "one who is pensioned (off)", but that would
imply that a "prisonee" is "one who is prisoned".
One thing that can be said about the English language -- it can be described
in many ways, but it can never be called consistent.
Andrew
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| A while back the Boston Globe, those pioneers of imaginative typography, ran an
article about teen suicide. One sentence began something like: "Teenagees are
faced with conflicting values..." I rather liked the implication that
adolescence is a condition inflicted by a force beyond one's control.
Val
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