Are you an attendee?

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
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20 April

Well, HM Queen Elizabeth II is an attendee, because (as is well known) she has those - called attendants, such as ladies-in-waiting - who attend on her.

However, if there is a royal screening or performance, Her Royal Majesty is no more than anyone else there an attendee just for attending it.

Likewise, with a conference: those who attend conferences are (conference) delegates, not attendees.


Picking up, now, where, a week ago, I left off - this sentence has been sponsored by the Royal Society for the Promotion of Commas! - I must turn to that implicit, and vexed (or, rather, misunderstood), question of pairs, as implied above:

I used the words 'attendee' and 'attendant' in the first sentence, and they are a pair, but not a Matching Pair in the way that, say, the legal terms mortgagor and mortgagee or warrantor and warrantee are*.

PROVIDED THAT one knows what one is talking about, one can infer what the pairs will be, which is why I have to go back and say what a mortgage is.

The word comes to us, from French, and literally means a dead glove, maybe even gauntlet: interesting though it would be, for me, to delve into what that origin is, it is just helpful to think in terms of the highly successful board-game Monopoly®, where mortgages are all part of the play.


So, if strapped for cash** (for example, because of landing on Mayfair when it has two hotels on it - and the owner of the hotels noticed before the next player shook the dice), or just because one wants to build said hotels and borrow the money, one can always mortgage the property / properties - to the value stipulated by the values on the game-card for it / them - to the bank to raise it. The property (or properties) is (are) the security for the loan.

Those who have played the game often enough will then know that the game-card(s), each one of which (in the game) is the title-deeds for the property (or properties), has (or have) to be turned the other way up. This act signifies two things:

(1) The player cannot, until the mortgage is redeemed (i.e. discharged), charge other players who land on it rent, etc. (so they get away scot free, as the phrase has it), because the table of what is ordinarily payable is on the other side of the card, which is now face down;

(2) More importantly, that the property (properties) is (are) no longer the player's to do with freely, within the rules (unless, of course, several more of the players in the game are bankers, in which case they make up their own rules!), as he or she wishes - the bank has its security for the money that was lent*** in it (or them), and, unless the player (perhaps as another banker) slily turns it back the other way up, hoping that no one will notice (as if people cheat at cards or in other games, even life), the mortgage needs to be redeemed first.


So what?, you ask, infuriated, bored, tired, or longing for a drink / death / redemption...

Well, the act of mortgaging is carried out by by the player who mortgages the property to the bank, so he (or she) is the mortgagor - and the bank, to whom it was mortgaged, is the mortgagee.

Exactly as with employer and employee, except that, with a mortgage, it may be less immediately obvious who is doing what, complicated by 'applying for a mortgage', the bank (or building society) 'making a mortgage offer', when was it really happening is somebody wanting a mortgage on certain terms, and the lender**** considering it all, and offering a mortgage, on those - or less good - terms.

The act of mortgaging remains what the owner of the property does. Which is obvious with a remortgage, because one knows, although one has a mortgage, who the owner is - it far less intuitively clear when the act of purchase of the property is simultaneous with mortgaging it to secure the loan (needed) to buy it.

Nonetheless, John Stuart Mill takes out the mortgage, mortgaging Black Acre to Z Building Society, and so is the mortgagor, never (in this case*****) the mortgagee.


Finally, though, other words do not pair up with -or and -ee (or, as with employer above, -er), but people (who should know better) try to make them: a bit like making an elephant co-habit with a porcupine in the hope that they will like each other and get married...

So we have, where we started, this crazy fiction that people who are at a conference or meeting are attendees - sometimes people may be 'in attendance', rather than 'present', but they are not attendees. Who, after all, is the attender, if they are? Well, they are themselves, I suppose...


Moving on to lender. Please, please do not be tempted by those who want to say that there is such a thing as a lendee - any more than there is any room for needing this stupid invention of tutee:


Table of Correspondences (non-exhaustive)

1. Borrower / Lender

2. Tutor / Student (or Pupil)

3. Donor of a power of attorney / Donee of the power

4. Buyer / Seller

5. Purchaser / Vendor



In a closing word, I shall say why I gave the last two pairs. There are a good few reasons:

(a) There is no Vendee;

(b) (No more than Buyee);

(c) The pairs don't mix - any more than the elephant and its 'spiky friend' above - and it is not My buyer is having problems with his vendor..., except in the sort of estate agency where your are definitely being charged too much commission;

(d) By inference, there are other real pairs that have not been mentioned, and where the one that lures may not exist - or mean what it seems!


A starter for ten:If someone who gives an assurance is a guarantor, who is the person who receives it? (Go here, if you want a clue...******)



End-notes

* One could go on, with legator and legatee, donor and donee...

** I have no notion where that came to us from, any more than - as mentioned in a conversation with friend Chris the other day - I have no truck with....

*** I quote the Order of Service:

Priest Some unfortunates would say 'loaned'
Congregation Verily, they are to be pitied
All Amen


**** If you hold 'lender', we will return to it later (D.V.).

***** Whereas, if John Stuart Mill's neighbour Virginia Woolf owns Blue Acre and needs some readies, she could mortgage it to him, and he would be a mortgagee.

****** Someone who says that he is someone else's Power of Attorney is actually telling you that he (or she) is a piece of paper!

(He or she is the donee of the power, but could also - as with the merged notion of solicitor / barrister in the States - be viewed as the donor's attorney.)


As if all that weren't enough...



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