-ee

-ee · suffix¹

1. French · derived from-é
2. Old French · derived from-ee
3. Middle English · inherited from-ee
4. English today-ee

From Middle English -ee, -ē, from Anglo-Norman and Old French -ee, French -é, -ée, endings forming past participle of verbs ending in -er. Doublet of -ate. More distantly related to inherited English -ed.

-ee · suffix²

Perhaps a variation on -ie and -y

-ee · suffix³

Most likely derived from the rudimentary English used by Chinese immigrants to America during the 17th to 19th centuries. The ee (/iː/) sound would be added by those speakers to “cushion” the final consonants of English words so as to make them sound more euphonic and be easier to speak, which is naturally done also by native speakers of highly syllabic languages (such as Italian, Japanese and Brazilian Portuguese). Phenomenon explanation Vowels following consonants is the default (or natural) state of human speech, with Modern English being an outlier at that. Compare child-directed words—such as Daddy, blankie, doggy and horsy—which end with the /iː/ vowel too and arise naturally from children's rudimentary, developing pronunciations of the corresponding consonant-final words (Dad, hors(e) etc.), following the same principle described above.