In the history of small talk, there has never been a question more universally reviled than “What do you do?” For one thing, the question is only ever half-asked, and rarely with genuine interest in the answer. But there’s a deeper source of dread: How should you describe what you do? I waffle between “columnist,” “journalist” and simply “writer.” A writer writes, right? But do journalists journal? On their own time, maybe. And can a columnist be said to “column?” I doubt it. Maybe the waffling is coming from inside the word. When a verb adopts an ending to describe a person who does that verb, that ending is known as an “agentive” suffix, and we refer to that final word as an agent noun. Different languages of origin have given English plenty of agentive suffixes to choose from. One can be an -er! An -eer! An -or! Here’s a list of jobs that don’t share a single suffix: barista, flautist, auditor, correspondent, engineer, registrar, treasurer, magician, lawyer, pollster, comedian. What happens when all of these walk into a bar? You can’t really mix and match. Nobody wants to have their teeth checked by a “denter,” and there’s something shady about railroad “conductsters.” Maybe that’s because it puts them in league with the hucksters, mobsters and pranksters, which all share that suffix. There’s technically nothing wrong with calling someone who draws a “drawer,” but it makes them indistinguishable from a piece of furniture, so we stick with “artist” or “illustrator.” Where endings are interchangeable, preferences vary. One of my pet peeves is seeing the word “vendor” spelled “vender,” even though both are accurate. (I guess that makes me a “ventor”: a person who vents.) Given all of this fuss, you may decide to forgo the agentive suffix altogether in polite conversation. Keep it vague: “I’m in finance.” That saves you from having to say something grandiloquent like “I’m a financier,” which makes you indistinguishable from a pastry, anyway. Another suggestion is to follow suit with American Sign Language, in which jobs are merely signed with an added downward motion, to indicate a person. A scientist is the sign for “science” followed by the sign for “person.” An artist is an art person, and a teacher is a teaching person. It’s enviably succinct. If you, too, find yourself vacillating between job descriptions and their respective endings, feel free to share your variants at crosswordeditors@nytimes.com. I am your eager “listeneer.” Solve the Midi
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