Ladies of science

The suffix -ist is added to a base to make a word that means 'someone who does something related to...', so an exorcist exorcises. It can mean someone who holds some belief system, so a Darwinist follows Darwin. And it can mean someone who practises some art or profession, so an etymologist studies etymology.

-ist is also helpfully gender-neutral, so it's never run into the same problems as -er/-(e)ress pairings like waiter/waitress, actor/actress. I learnt the other day that it was in fact invented specifically to refer to a woman, Mary Somerville, joint first female member of the Royal Academy, because she couldn't be called a 'man of science'.

Caption from exhibit at Turner Contemporary, saying that 'scientist' was first used to describe Mary Somerville

I'm pleased they went with this and not 'lady of science' or something.

Vaguely relatedly, there's a really nice essay by Laurie Bauer on why linguists are not called linguisticians, with some interesting insights on the connotations of each suffix (-ician was 'trivialising' at the time the words were being coined).