here is a bit of weirdness

[miriam_e]

The title Mrs, referring to a married woman, is pronounced as mis' iz, but that is just a traditional slurring of the word mistress which is what Mrs is really an abbreviation for. But the title Miss, meaning an unmarried woman, is also an abbreviation for mistress. It gets even stranger though: many women now prefer to use the title Ms which leaves undisclosed whether the person is married or not. Oddly, it too is an abbreviation for mistress.

The craziness of gender politics. :)

Comments

[rpeate.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's all crap. I actually had an unresolved argument with a friend over this. He insisted that "miss" was not an abbreviation for "mistress", that only "mrs." was.

What really bothers me is how everyone reacts to "madame", which means the SAME DAMNED THING.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

It truly is all crap. :)

I became curious about the word missus, which always seemed to me a made-up word, so I looked it up in the dictionary and that is where I found all that info. I love dictionaries. When I was a kid I would often sit and read the dictionary on the train to and from school. I would joke that it was a great book with a wonderful command of language, but a rather pitiful plot. :)

I still, to this day, read the dictionary, but now it is more accidental. I will look something up and my eye will be caught by something which I will also look up, and that will take me to something else, and to something further, and so on. It is a very easy way to lose hours. You may have guessed that I am one of the most easily distracted people on the planet, and you'd be right. The upside is that I spend my life in a state of perpetual interest in everything around me.

[rpeate.livejournal.com]

We are alike.

The prevailing mood seems one of anti-education.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

:)
Interesting you say that about the prevailing mood. If you are talking about big media, I agree with you. If you are talking about the general population I don't. Books sales are up and scientific literacy among ordinary folk is at an all-time high (granted this is more noticeable in Europe and Australia, as USA has lagged badly in this respect in recent decades). People are more moral, more knowledgeable, less violent, and more sensible than ever before... it is just that (mostly US-based) big media portray us as the exact reverse of that. One has to wonder why.

Are the cocaine-and-whisky-addled media executives really that stupid? I believe so; I think they are too brain-damaged and paranoid to collude in conspiracy. Just look at how the recording industry ignores enormous potential mp3 profits in favor of victimising their best customers. Not the actions of a very smart or rational bunch.

[alecto23.livejournal.com]

I do that too. I will do it with pretty much any reference book, which makes working in a library very dangerous. :)

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

hehehehe :)
I know what you mean. For a time I worked in a bookshop. It was wonderful... kid in a candystore. Staff were allowed large discounts on books. Needless to say most of my wages went on books.

I'm surrounded by books here where I live -- a couple of thousand paper ones and a few thousand electronic. It is a miracle I get anything done at all. :)

[alecto23.livejournal.com]

Because Brewer's is still sitting on my desk, distracting me:

Miss, Mistress, Mrs. Miss used to be written 'Mis' and is the first syllable of Mistress. Mrs is the contraction of 'mistress' and is pronounced 'Missis'. As late as the time of George II (r. 1727–60), single women used to be styled Mrs, as Mrs Lepel, Mrs Bellenden and Mrs Blount, all unmarried women mentioned by Alexander Pope (1688–1744).
Mistress was originally an honourable term for sweetheart or lover ('Mistress mine, where are you roaming'), and in the 17th century Miss was often used for a paramour, e.g. Charles II's 'misses'. Mistress has since come to mean a woman who has an extramarital sexual relationship with a man.
A further development is Ms, pronounced 'Miz', as an abbrevaition of either Mrs or Miss, designed to avoid distiunguishing between married and unmarried women. This title first arose in the USA in the 1940s.

The entry finishes with an anecdote from the New York Post about Nixon preferring to address women as "Mrs" or "Miss", a sentiment the journalist obviously shares.

[alecto23.livejournal.com]

Please ignore my typos. It's so easy to make them when the desk isn't big enough to hold a big thick book and you have to crane to read it as you type.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

How odd that the usage of the abbreviations has actually reversed!
And I had no idea 'Ms' was as old as that. I'd assumed it started in the 70s.