noun
- the letter S, s.
- something shaped like an S: The road wound among the mountains in great esses.
- a suffix forming distinctively feminine nouns: countess; goddess; lioness.
suffix forming nouns
- indicating a femalewaitress; lioness
fem. suffix, from French -esse, from Late Latin -issa, from Greek -issa (cognate with Old English fem. agent suffix -icge); rare in classical Greek but more common later, in diakonissa “deaconess” and other Church terms picked up by Latin.