Having visited relatives and friends in New York (not to mention the Met), I confess that I do get a kick watching some insider NYC references on the night time soap Gossip Girl. I confess though to being curious if any of the more manipulative characters had actually learned anything of academic interest from their expensive private school and Ivy League educations.

To my delight though, one of the fashionistas realized that she might want to think about a career depending on skills and talent rather than influence and dirty tricks. Her choice? To be an editrix of a major fashion magazine. Using her Latin, she realized that she didn’t have to settle for being just an editor (originally the masculine form), but could actually rise to the feminine editrix.

Sadly the feminine -rix suffix has been mostly consigned to ladies in leather (the “dominatrix”), but Latinists also know it from aviatrix (i.e. woman aviators such as Amelia Earhart) and executrix (women who are estate executors). But sometimes an educated woman remembers that -rix and -or were once more co-equal and will reclaim the -rix suffix for her own (sometimes when I have the map in the car, I am the navigatrix.

I like the choice of “editrix” because there is nothing wrong with a talented woman wielding power in her own right in the open.