Expectaltee: A person who expects something

The word of the day:

† expectaltee, n.

Obs. rare. A person who expects something. [OED]

You might ask how on the earth expectaltee is a word. Well, apparently it is a word but the origin is uncertain according to OED.

Etymology: Origin uncertain. Apparently ultimately related to expect v.

Perhaps compare Spanish expectante person who awaits or expects something, use as noun of expectante that expects or awaits something (both first half of the 15th cent.: see expectant adj. and n.), although if this were the etymon, the alteration of the ending would be difficult to account for.

There is only one citation in OED and it is also one of the two results from Google Books.

Peeces compiled..out of Plutarchs fulness and Seneca's quickness, would undoubtedly fill the mouth of the most gaping Expectaltee among Readers.

1654, R. Whitlock Ζωοτομία Pref. sig. a,

The other result in Google Books is from the book Studies in the Lexical Field of Expectation, Volume 90 by Louise Sylvester and here is the relevant excerpt:

As we might expect, French and Latin together account for all but one of the borrowings from Romance languages: the remaining item (expectaltee 1654, to be found in I.1 and with two citations from a single author in the OED), having been borrowed from Spanish. The Spanish borrowing clearly never became sufficiently acclimatized in the language to admit of foreign affixes or to be used to form compound.

Questions:

• Can we conclude that it is coined by R. Whitlock? OED gives only one citation but the book Studies in the Lexical Field of Expectation, Volume 90 claims that OED had two citations from the same author (I don't know if OED deleted the other one) and mentions another citation also.

• How is this word formed? Might it be malformation based on the pronunciation of Spanish expectante? I'm not sure if any other word ends with "altee" (if we can even consider it a suffix).

Spanish has the suffix -ante (-nte, -ente, -iente) that forms adjectives and nouns from verbs. For example, English borrowed vigilante from Spanish as is. The same suffix -ante is used in French and Italian and we borrowed words like confidante and dilettante.

Solution 1:

What an amazing question! Thank you for sharing this.

I don't know if we can conclude that this lovely word was invented by R. Whitlock, although it seems likely. It certainly seems to be one of these "poetic words" invented by poets.

My own belief about the way he might have derived it is that he started with two rules: first, the English tendency to make an accusative by adding "ee" on the end (like "employee"); then, using the word "expectal" (rather than expectant), because of the tendency to add "al" to make an adjective (as in "fractal", "genial").