master (n.)

owner, manager, chief, head, leader, governor, superior, director, supervisor, employer, boss, commander, captain, controller; sovereign, ruler, monarch, autocrat, dictator, potentate; expert, authority, artist, adept, proficient, specialist, connoisseur, professional, genius; mentor, teacher, trainer, instructor, educator, tutor, faculty dean; victor, conqueror, winner, champion; householder, proprietor, landholder. "Master" has some inclusive meanings (owner, employer, teacher, scholar, artisan, victor, etc.) but because the principal meanings of the word are incontrovertibly masculine (for example, "male head of household"), because there is no equivalent for a woman (in the once-parallel word pair "master/mistress," the prolific male word has spawned entire pages of "master"-based words in the dictionaries while the female word has shrunk to describe only the sexual function of the woman), and because of its association with slavery, "master" and its related words are not recommended. "Master" is used as noun, verb, and adjective as well as a compound in many other words, which means its overwhelmingly masculine, hierarchical, and slave-based flavor seasons a good bit of our language. Except for its applications in trades where it has specific meaning and no currently acceptable substitutes, "master" and other forms of the word can be replaced with some of the many appropriate and easy-to-use alternatives. That said, there are times when nothing works quite as well and when the word seems to have gone beyond its associations with male dominance and slavery, for example, "master" (verb and adjective) and "mastery." Casey Miller and Kate Swift (The Handbook of Nonsexist Writing, 2nd ed. ) say, "The presence of master in many combinations like masterful, mastery, masterpiece, and mastermind assures its continuance as a useful sex-neutral term."