Quote:
Originally Posted by gregorio
Mentee is a perfectly acceptable word, and one can be someone's mentee without being his or her protégé.
I looked it up and was surprised to find that you're right! It sounded like one of those words that people make up on the fly, like when so many people pluralize any word ending in -us, -es, or -is by dropping the last two letters and adding -i. We all know that the plural of alumnus is alumni, but then you'll hear, for example, someone pluralize penis as peni (long i).
Thanks for the education.