...at least not linguistivally

Here’s a fun fact unearthed while writing the article about Miranda Hart hosting the Royal Variety Performance – there’s no such thing as a female compere.

Because technically, a woman hosting a show should be called a commere.

Compere comes from the French for ‘with father’ so the feminine form is commere – ‘with mother’.

The  word also means a gossip or busybody – and can be applied to a man or a woman.

In the mid-19th Century it was as common as ‘comedienne’, or even more so, but now it is used around 3 per cent as frequently, according to Google’s Ngram analysis of texts.

Published: 1 Nov 2017