If protégé is the person who receives, so-to-speak, who is the giver? That is, what's the terms used for the person under whose patronage the protégé is?
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2Why the •s in pro•té•gé? – Hugo Jun 08 '14 at 20:36
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@Hugo I would guess they copied from a dictionary that uses bullets to note hyphenation points. They do not belong in the word itself though, so I have edited to remove them. – Jon Hanna Jun 08 '14 at 21:18
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Jon Hanna is right. It was copied as such. But it looks ok now I guess – Effector Dhanushanth Jun 08 '14 at 21:23
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“Trainer” is to “trainee” as “mentor” is to what? – RegDwigнt Jun 08 '14 at 21:32
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Mentor is to mentee – Effector Dhanushanth Dec 14 '20 at 10:23
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The other person in the relationship with a protégé could be a protector, a patron or rarely a patrona (a female form of patron, normally not used, and hence implying that there is something significant in this protégé benefiting from a woman's patronage, hinting at a motivation for her generosity in the matter).
Most often though, the word is used to suggest that the protégé is learning from this person, and so that person is a mentor.
Certainly in the other direction, the person who benefits from a mentor is a protégé. (Unless again, we felt the need to distinguish a female protégée for some reason).
Jon Hanna
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So does this imply that "patrona" has premeditative, or excogitative connotations (latter, in the least)? – Effector Dhanushanth Jun 08 '14 at 21:29
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Is there a seperate word for "female" protégée? What is it por favor? – Effector Dhanushanth Jun 08 '14 at 21:31
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Yes. It's a very rare word in Modern English (if we were writing of Ancient Rome and contrasting a patrona and a patronus, then such borrowing from Latin would be a different matter). We would 99% of the time use patron whether of a man or a woman. Choosing patrona would mean one of two things: 1. We were hinting that her being female was significant in some way (most likely that she finds her protégé attractive) or 2. We are showing off that we know the relatively rare word patrona ;) – Jon Hanna Jun 08 '14 at 21:34
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You just used the separate word for a female protégée; it is protégée. Note the extra e compared to protégé. We would again though normally just use protégé for either sex. The choice to use protégée wouldn't be quite as pointed though, just rather old-fashioned (it used to be quite common) or perhaps a side-effect of the writer being familiar with the French from which it was borrowed and considering the extra e to be to proper way to use the word for that reason. – Jon Hanna Jun 08 '14 at 21:36
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Isn't the female form of "patron" simply "matron", just as the female form of father is mother, and not "fathera"? – Adriano Varoli Piazza Jun 09 '14 at 13:38
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@Adriano. No. Even in classical Latin, patronus (patron, protector) had different meanings to pater (father), though they are related, and patrona was the female form of that. – Jon Hanna Jun 09 '14 at 13:48
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@RyeɃreḁd We posted our answers at roughly the same time. Just ask him, he'll confirm. – Elian Jun 09 '14 at 07:09
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@RyeBread, this is true. Certainly they were close enough together than I imagine Elian had started on this answer before they could see mine. – Jon Hanna Jun 09 '14 at 11:06
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The patron is the person in question:
a patron supports an protects a protégé usually to furthers his career.
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@RyeBread ~ mine was the first answer, well before others! Please check before making comments and downvote. – Jun 09 '14 at 08:48
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@RyeBread, no Josh61 was there before me. As my answer states, I think mentor is much more often the appropriate word, but my answer includes this because there are indeed times when patron is the mot juste. – Jon Hanna Jun 09 '14 at 11:05