“Search for Escapee Continues.” This newspaper headline led into the story of a convict from Arizona who had fled prison and, as of this writing, has not yet been found. Driving with a woman believed to be his accomplice the man has continued successfully to elude police.

Like the headline writer and most other people, you may find no problem with the sentence that introduces the story. I do, however, because I believe the word escapee to be misused.

Similarly, I object to the way several other nouns with the same -ee ending are used. The ones I have chosen, and some other -ee nouns too, should all end in one of three other forms -or, -er, or -ist.

To my mind, you should not call those who fill a concert hall or movie theater attendees. That is to suggest they have been dragged in to fill up the seats instead of choosing to come of their own accord.

Nor does it do justice to members of the armed forces to dub them enlistees. In these days of the volunteer army, that shortchanges their decision to join. If interviews with them can be trusted, most of them feel proud at what they have done.

I also cannot abide labeling those who could not find seats as standees. Given my newly acquired gimpiness, I know how inappropriate the word standee is for what you do when invited to a party where your hosts continue to serve drinks long before you sit down to dinner.

More emphatically do I reject the word retiree when applied to those who have left paid employment on their own initiative. The word should instead describe those who have been laid off.

The final -ee noun that I single out here is the word departee. It seems to me a bad fit to describe anyone who has vacated a certain place. Maybe it can be used to speak of a dead person but, even then, it strikes me as awkward.

You may judge my campaign against certain -ee nouns as altogether frivolous and arbitrary.  If so, you can consider the column as a lighthearted linguistic exercise appropriate for the late summer.

But I take language seriously and want you as an ally in my campaign against the half-dozen -ee nouns. The older I become, the more important my native English becomes for me.

As should have become clear from preceding paragraphs, my objection to these six nouns is the way they have become passive instead of active. As the pursuing police can tell you, the escaper has been doing something quite active in first breaking out of prison and then leading the cops on a mad chase around the country.

And so did the attenders, the enlistors, the standers, the retirors, and the departers: they all do something active. They were not acted upon, they acted.

Of course, if people got laid off, they can quite properly be termed retirees since they had to accept a passive condition –  being acted upon by getting the axe. But thanks to enlightened legislation from 1980, no one can be legally dismissed because of age except for airline pilots, some judges, and members of a few other professions.

Besides the nouns singled out here because I think they need correction, there are plenty of other words that quite properly end in -ee. The word manatee, for example, serves nicely as the name of a delightful fish seen cavorting in the waters of Florida. To my mind, gazing at them may be ranked as one of the pleasures of visiting that state.

And the noun matinee, deriving from the French word for morning, suggests the sometimes guilty pleasure of going off to a movie or a ball game in the daytime. Unfortunately, major-league baseball fans have precious few opportunities these days for indulging in such daytime attendance.

At least one language authority, H. W. Fowler, agrees with my strictures. This usage maven calls escapee “a SUPERFLUOUS WORD that should not be allowed to usurp the place of escaper.”

Under another heading, Fowler decries the modern tendency to make new “agent-nouns” by applying the ending -ee. That has the effect of confusing the word’s meaning, he says.

Still, even were I left without support from linguistic authorities, I would remain determined to bring to public attention the fate these poor nouns have suffered. And I have remedies right at hand.

I want attenders to take over for attendees; retirors to replace retirees (unless they have been kicked out); departers to succeed departees; enlistors to take over from enlistees; escapers to supplant escapees; and finally standees to become standers.

This, in short, is my ready-made formula for improving some of our language. Dismiss me as a fastidious critic if you will, but I will not back down until I see justice restored to those half dozen currently weak-kneed nouns.