Weblog - English

"Mentee" - A case study in degenerate morphology.

"...an ugly little word whose meaning may not be understood by those who didn’t attend its illegitimate birth"

I have more than occasionally heard the term "mentee" used to mean "one who is mentored", i.e., a student, a pupil, or someone who is receiving coaching. There are several immediately bothersome inconsistencies:
1. "One who is mentored" might more logically be a "mentoree".
2. The word is unrecognizable out of context. Many persons would probably understand the sentence, “Would the coaches please meet with their mentees?”, but "mentee" by itself is almost unknown to most. In surveying five non-Toastmasters on the definition of "mentee", I found:
-- one person who guessed the meaning correctly only after she asked for clarification,
-- one who thought that a "mentee" was a large seal,
-- three who had no idea.

"Mentee" has one of the most corrupt etymologies I've heard in a word in current use.
-- "Mentor" as a term for "teacher" entered the English language as a mixed metaphor. Mentor was the trusted friend and servant of Ulysses in Homer's Odyssey to whom Ulysses entrusted the education of his son, Telemachus. If logic holds in the metaphor, then my mentor is my trusted servant and is my son's teacher, not my teacher. The OED* attributes the use of "mentor" as "teacher" to a 1699 play based on the Odyssey in which Mentor's character is solely that of a teacher.
-- The use of "to mentor" to mean "to teach" is achieved by "verbing", a late Twentieth Century vulgarism. "Mentor" is a noun, but just use it as a verb and everyone will understand. (Won't they?) Other examples of this practice are "Let's dialogue" and "He authored a book."
-- Until the Twentieth Century, the "ee" suffix, originally from French, was used chiefly in English legal terminology to indicate the receiver of an action: e.g., "payee" - one to whom payment is made; "assignee" - one to whom something is assigned; "referee" - one to whom a decision in referred. Occasionally, the "ee" suffix indicated the object of an action, as in "employee" - one who is employed. For any consistency, one who is mentored would have to be a "mentoree". Probably there is an assumption that a "mentor" is one who ments, and a “mentee” is one who is mented. Would a "dementee" be one who is demented? I haven't yet heard of a mentor who was menting his mentee, but that may be because I'm afraid to listen closely enough.

The result of this barbaric treatment of the language is an ugly little word whose meaning may not be understood by those who didn’t attend its illegitimate birth. "Student", "pupil", and "learner" are known words; creating "mentee" only adds confusion. Can we look forward to "teachee", "tutoree", or even worse, "tutee", which is listed in some dictionaries but, thankfully, is not in common use?