Songster comes from Old English sangestre ('female singer'), from sang ('song') + the agentive suffix -estre/-ster. Related to sing, from Proto-Germanic *singwaną. The historical chain includes Old English sangestre and Old English sang. The quoted older senses, "female singer" and "song", supply the semantic anchors for songster. The formation is best read as suffixal, compound, and borrowed: the word songster carries its older form-history into a compact English lexical shape. In present English it is used as a noun, "a person who sings, or a songbird". English derivatives include songstress; related English forms include song and sing. The result is a noun whose etymology preserves both the older form and the later English specialization.