Why were activists called ‘suffragettes’?

In 1906, the Daily Mail journalist Charles E Hands coined the term to mock the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), adding the suffix ‘–ette’ to suggest they were diminutive or feminine. But Emmeline Pankhurst’s organisation embraced the term as a badge of honour. While it is now used as a catch-all term, technically only militant activists like the WSPU were suffragettes. Millicent Fawcett’s peaceful National Union of Women’s Suffrage

Societies should be called ‘suffragists’.