Why, do you think, do the attenders at conferences refer to themselves as "attendees"?

Good question—never occurred to me!

You may leave an attendee behind but never......

From the French -- they're waiting for it to be over. Wait, wait, wait.

@dearieme: I can't explain "why," but there are a number of "-ee" nouns indicating agents (standee, attendee, retiree, escapee, etc.). One common factor is that in no case is there a human patient, so it partly resembles the ergative-absolutive system found in certain languages, but I can't say whether that's a meaningful resemblance or not.

Nothing to do with French. An attendee is not someone who waits (although this often happens) but a person being attended by others. This is indeed a type of absolutive (a rare thing in English). The -ee words do not indicate "agents", which can only be defined in relation to "patients" or "objects" upon which they are acting. You could call them "experiencers": things happen to them but they are not actively doing something to others.

While we are on this track, I have wondered about the word mentee meaning the person being supervised by a mentor. The mentor is not "menting" anyone but "mentoring" them, so the object of this attention should be a "mentoree" - but mentee is what I have seen and heard.

Sorry, I forgot that the point was about attending a conference. But you can't use attender in this context as the persons attending are not actually doing anything involving others. They don't even have to listen as listeners do - just to be there, just like the standees on the bus. I guess this has to do with whether the verbs are active (eg listen, speak) or stative (eg stand), but this can't be the whole thing. Consider a sitter: this is not just someone who is sitting but someone who is sitting with somebody as an attendant: hence a baby-sitter. The people sitting in the audience at a play or concert cannot be called sitters (sittees anyone ?). Is anyone doing their MA in linguistics on this topic?

Always tender* is the night, that's understood, but who knows whether to find a lover you should look at "la Carte du Tendre" or "la Carte de Tendre"?

* "soft, easily injured," c.1225, from O. Fr. tendre "soft, delicate, tender" (11c.) (etymonline)

In fact the whole -er and -ee system fits perfectly with the ergative-absolutive system: -er is ergative, -ee is absolutive. See my Cthulhu-based tutorial.

I do not believe, sir, that Cthulhu is ever "embarrassed." I suggest "Cthulhu dropped the watermelon and was enraged."

In Hebrew tender (טנדר) means pickup truck. Such words usually originate from English. Random House Unabridged says "a car attached to a steam locomotive for carrying fuel and water". I wonder if this is the etymology.

Of course, there is also a "bar tender", who tends the bar. (Kind of too straightforward for this blog, I know).

It is an old joke here in Finland, especially among toy train buffs, to translate Elvis's Love Me Tender as Rakasta minua, hiilivaunu ("love me, coal-wagon").

Thomas the Train's cohorts include tenders called Edward, James, and Gordon. My two-year-old nephew has taught me a lot about trains in the last six months.

Would that be Thomas the Tank Engine, or does he have an American guise?

Yes, that's Thomas the Tank Engine. My almost-four-year-old grandson is a fan as well.

As we know, the English word "tank", first attested in 1498, can be traced back to the Gujerati word "tānk'h". (From Gujerati it can, of course, be traced back to a Dravidian original.)