Other forms: suffragettes
A suffragette was a woman who campaigned militantly for the vote. The suffragette movement, arrested as a suffragette, suffragette colours.
The word was coined as a sneer by the Daily Mail in 1906 and adopted by the campaigners themselves. Suffragists were the constitutional wing and suffragettes the militant one, and the distinction was real and sharply felt at the time.
1nounsuffragetteA woman who campaigned militantly for the vote.
“The suffragette chained herself to the railings outside Parliament.”
suffragette is a campaigner.
Suffrage plus -ette, coined as a derisive label in 1906 and taken up by the movement itself.
la-cla
suffrāgium
Old French
suffrage
Middle French
suffrage
Middle English
suffrage — prayers or pleas on behalf of another
English
suffrage
English, today
suffragette
From suffrage + ette, first used as a derisive label by the Daily Mail in 1906, but eventually adopted by the WSPU itself. suffrage comes from Middle English suffrage (“prayers or pleas on behalf of another”), from Middle French suffrage, from Old French suffrage, from la-cla suffrāgium. From Middle English suffrage (“prayers or pleas on behalf of another”), from Middle French suffrage (from Old French suffrage) and its etymon la-cla suffrāgium (“support, vote, right of voting”). The sense of "vote" or "right to vote" was directly derived from Classical Latin.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA