The Cambridge Guide to Australian English Usage - Noel's ESL ...

edema or oedema
alternative measure sometimes used in such cases is the hyphen: mascara-ed, radioed,
though it has the disadvantage of seeming to create an extra syllable, and is little
used, according to a survey reported in English Today in 1988.
Few words of this kind are entered as verbs in dictionaries (because they are
essentially nouns being pressed into verbal service). When they are, the American
dictionaries give them the regular spelling (as in hennaed, umbrellaed and visaed);
whereas British dictionaries occasionally use the apostropheed (or apostrophe’d)
spelling, as in tiara’d. Fowler’s principle has a value when there are two or three
different vowels preceding the suffix, as in shanghai’d and plateau’d, but seems
unnecessary when there are two identical vowels before the suffix, as in baaed and
tattooed. Words ending with double e (agree, filigree, pedigree, referee, tee) conform
easily to the general rule by which a final e is dropped before a suffix (see under -e).
In general the regular -ed spelling seems to work, and it does offer a clear principle
for new or ad hoc uses of words as verbs.
Spellings with the regular -ed have been used in this book wherever there are choices like those
discussed above.
For the choice between aged 16 and age 16, see inflectional extras.
edema or oedema See under oe.
edgeways or edgewise See under -wise.
educator, educationist or educationalist All these words seem to have
aspirations beyond the familiar word teacher, and represent the desire to express
the professionalism involved in pedagogy. Educator implies direct contact with
students, whether as a lecturer, tutor, classroom teacher, or coach. The term
education(al)ist implies someone specifically interested in the theory and methods
of teaching. The shorter form is more common in both the US and Britain,
and it had Fowler’s (1926) vote, although the longer form persists and is
endorsed by Australian dictionaries. Webster’s English Usage (1989) notes that
educationist has unfavorable connotations in some of its recent citations, and that
educationalist (provided it remains neutral) might serve instead. A more radical
solution was proposed for Australians by Murray-Smith (1989): to use educator
for all applications. Unfortunately it leaves us with no way of distinguishing the
practitioner from the academic.
-ee This ending appears on English words for a number of reasons. Apart from
a few simple ones like knee and tree, such words are often foreign loanwords
in which -ee is the best way to represent the final syllable in English. So it stands
instead of “i” in Hindi loanwords such as dungaree, kedgeree and suttee; and also in
chimpanzee, borrowed from a Bantu language. Yet its most common use in English
is as counterpart to the French use of e for the past participle, a usage which was
established in English law when legal matters were still discussed in hybrid French
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