做活检意味着什么

Question

Masculinisation refers to (among other things) to applying stereotypical masculine traits to something. The word stem is masculine and then you add isation. I think that is a pretty common construction (e.g., realisation, civilisation etc).

But what is the feminine counterpart? The stem word is feminine, and if you use the same pattern as used in masculinisation you would remove the silent e at the end and attach isation, and get femininisation, but that form is very uncommon (the difference is ≈ 3 magnitudes). Instead people uses feminisation. Isn't that incorrect?

Answer 1

The problem lies in the etymological root of each word.

Etymonline explains that feminization comes from feminize, which appeared in the 1650's and means:

"make feminine or womanish," from Latin femina "woman, a female" [literally "she who suckles," from PIE root *dhe(i)- "to suck")] + -ize. Related: Feminized; feminizing. Femalize (1670s, intransitive, 1709, transitive) and femininize (1868) are more rare.

Note that femininize does exist, but as you yourself discovered, it is really uncommon. Also note that the noun feminization does not come from feminine, but directly from the Latin root femina (which explains the absence of the extra syllable -in).

Whereas masculinization, according to OED, appeared later and was formed from the verb masculinize:

masculinize v. + ?ation suffix, perhaps after feminization.

Under masculinise, OED says it appeared around 1858. So masculinization appeared after feminization and may have been born through analogical derivation.

I am only offering here a minimal investigation of the matter, as I quite doubt there is written confirmation of this hypothesis. If there were, I believe OED's etymology would be less vague.

Answer 2

From the OED, all of these were formed within English, by derivation:

femininization = feminine adj. + ?ization suffix
first attestation at 1844
Appears as feminization in the American edition of the British magazine quoted at 1844

feminization = feminize v. + ?ation suffix
first attestation at 1844
See above; appears as femininization in the British magazine source quoted at 1844

masculinization = masculinize v. + ?ation suffix
first attestation at 1895
Perhaps after feminization

_{Source: Oxford English Dictionary (login required)}

There is no direct formation of masculine adj + ?ization suffix, which would, in any case, also yield masculinization.

As for the frequency of usage, perhaps: Why use inini when ini will do?