The first proposal for "Ms." (1901)
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It's been a long time coming, but I'm happy to report on an important linguistic discovery: the earliest known proposal for Ms. as a title for a woman regardless of her marital status. The suggestion for filling "a void in the English language" appeared in the Springfield (Mass.) Republican on November 10, 1901, and was reprinted and discussed by other newspapers around the country. I had been on the trail of this item for a few years, and plumbing digitized newspaper databases finally revealed the original use.
You can read all about it in my latest Word Routes column on the Visual Thesaurus.
Janice Huth Byer said,
June 23, 2009 @ 8:02 pm
Congratulations, Ben. What a fascinating find! The case made by the Springfield Republican that, "to call a maiden Mrs is only a shade worse that to insult a matron with the inferior title Miss" is a hoot. Interesting that no period is placed after Mrs., raising the question of what purpose a period serves.
Comments attached to Ben's column, linked above, ponder why Ms. has a period, when it's not an abbreviation. Consistency with Mr. and Mrs.? Although it's said to be short for Mistress, Miss has no period.
Bloix said,
June 23, 2009 @ 8:08 pm
Congratulations on a very interesting find.
On jazz, is it possible that jazz was an existing word unrelated to New Orleans jas or jass, and that confusion led to the adoption of jazz as the standard spelling and pronunciation?
Lazar said,
June 23, 2009 @ 8:32 pm
I'd have preferred just extending "Mrs." to unmarried women, as happens now with similar terms like "madame", "Frau", "señora", "signora".
Gordon Campbell said,
June 23, 2009 @ 9:45 pm
@ Janice Huth Byer
"Comments attached to Ben's column, linked above, ponder why Ms. has a period, when it's not an abbreviation."
A more important question: as it's not an abbreviation, can we use it in scrabble? (at any rate, it should be allowed in scrabble as the plural of "m")
John Cowan said,
June 23, 2009 @ 10:14 pm
Lazar: Just think of "Ms." as a collapsed form of "Mistress". In 18th-century usage, "Mistress" (abbreviated "Mrs.") was applied to both married and unmarried females.
(My wife was "Ms. McGhan" for many years and is now "Ms. Cowan". Why'd she change? "McGhan" wasn't her maiden name either, but she didn't have the $50 required to change her name back at the time and place of her divorce.)
Stephen Jones said,
June 23, 2009 @ 10:35 pm
But only to women of a certain age. I was severely chastised once for calling a woman 'señora'. She was clearly old enough for the title, but didn't wish to be reminded of the fact.
Stephen Jones said,
June 23, 2009 @ 10:41 pm
I note that Freeman states that in British English Ms, Mrs, and Mr don't get a period. In fact both usages are common, though the one without the period seems to be gaining ground.
marie-lucie said,
June 23, 2009 @ 10:48 pm
I'd have preferred just extending "Mrs." to unmarried women, as happens now with similar terms like "madame", "Frau", "señora", "signora".
"Mrs." is always followed by the name of a husband, so an unmarried woman cannot be "Mrs." This is one reason why you can call a woman's attention with "Miss!", but not with "Mrs!"
In French there is "Madame" and "Mademoiselle" (the latter now used only for very young girls), and like "Monsieur" they do not have to be followed by a name but can be used alone, so it is possible to address people without knowing their names. Even before "Madame" was extended to all adult women, it was not just for married women, but also for women of a certain status, deserving of respectul address, including nuns in positions of responsibility, who travelled as "Madame X", not "Soeur X" or "Mère X" as they would have been known in their convent or in church circles. In past centuries, eg under Louis XIV, rank rather than marital status determined the form of address: "Madame" was used for high-ranking women, whether married or not (eg all royal princesses, regardless of age), and "Mademoiselle" for commoners, whether married or not. This means that "Madame" is an equivalent of "(mi)Lady", not just of "Mrs."
I grew up at a time when "Mademoiselle" was used before the name of all never-married women, regardless of age (and because of the loss of men in two world wars, there were quite a number of unmarried mature and older women), and to me "Mademoiselle" used beyond perhaps 25 years old seems to imply that the woman in question did not have the usual experiences of an adult woman (and the responsibilities which go with them), while "Madame" implies fully adult status. Things started to change when I was in my teens, when the Post Office decided that unmarried mothers (eg when receiving their family allowance checks) should be addressed as "Madame" rather than "Mademoiselle".
marie-lucie said,
June 23, 2009 @ 10:53 pm
p.s. In French law a married woman does not lose her last name or take her husband's: being known by his last name is only a social custom, but legal papers bear her birth name. So a divorced woman does not have to go through the formality and expense of petitioning to get her name back (while her former husband incurs no such penalty), she is just known as "Madame" (as during her marriage) plus her own name.
Aaron Davies said,
June 24, 2009 @ 12:56 am
"mrs." is presumably an abbreviation for the word "missus". how does the use of "miss" as a form of address relate to the evolution of "miss" as a stand-alone noun meaning "young woman"? if the latter came first, that could explain the form of address's lack of a period.
speaking of which, there's an old joke that won't be parseable much longer:
dr.: i have good news for you, mrs. smith.
woman: actually it's "miss smith".
dr.: sorry. well, i have have bad news for you, miss smith.
Picky said,
June 24, 2009 @ 5:26 am
@marie-lucie: You can (or could once) attract a woman's attention with Mrs (spelled Missus) in BrE – at least in LondonE. As in: 'Ere, Missus!
And "Me Missus" is my wife.
Unless Missus is different from Mrs.
marie-lucie said,
June 24, 2009 @ 6:59 am
@Aaron: "mrs." is presumably an abbreviation for the word "missus".
No, "Mrs." (pronounced "Missis") is a written abbreviation of the word "Mistress", the counter part of "Mr" for "Master", used for adult men, later pronounced "Mister" when prefacing the name (and only later as "Master" for young boys of a certain class). "Missus" is a dialectal variant of the same word, first used as a term of address before the (husband's) last name, and later as a noun meaning "wife" in some dialects.
how does the use of "miss" as a form of address relate to the evolution of "miss" as a stand-alone noun meaning "young woman"? if the latter came first, that could explain the form of address's lack of a period.
"Miss" is another short form of "Mistress". I have run into the expression "a young miss" though not "a miss", but perhaps that only shows my limited acquaintance with English dialects. "Miss" is short enough in itself (and the pronunciation is obvious from the writing) that it does not need an abbreviation, therefore it does not take a period.
(It seems to me that "Mr" does not take a period – unlike "M." in French – but "Mrs." does – unlike "Mme" in French, since the latter word ends with the same letters as the full word).
@Picky, what you say is true, but it is restricted to a certain dialect, like "'Ere!".
George said,
June 24, 2009 @ 10:28 am
Addressing a woman as 'Missus' (spelling varies; it's only written in reported speech anyway) was also very common in Ireland until quite recently but would have been considered a sign of somewhat uneducated speech. It is important to note that it was used primarily to address a person; one would never have referred to a woman as 'a missus', although referring to one's wife as 'the missus' or 'my missus' was possible. (In Ireland, I have a feeling that 'my missus' or 'the missus' had a jocular tone that they may not necessarily have had in other dialects of English; someone else might have a better informed opinion on that. For those familiar with 1980s British television, think Arthur Daley's 'her indoors'.)
iakon said,
June 24, 2009 @ 10:36 am
The period is applied to Mr and Mrs only because of custom. These are contractions: the last letter is the last letter of the word. An abbreviation, such as etc., takes a period to indicate that 'c' is not the last letter.
Picky said,
June 24, 2009 @ 11:10 am
@George: I agree about the jocular tone – although that may be because it was so often used by comics when talking to members of the audience. Which reminds me … Ken Dodd … so it's present in Liverpudlian, too.
It is, as you say, non-standard – but then the use of Miss on its own as a form of address seems non-standard to me, too, marie-lucie.
George said,
June 24, 2009 @ 11:28 am
@ Picky, there's a self-awareness about 'the missus', a sense of 'I-don't-really-talk-like-this-myself-you-know' that may explain the feeling that it's jocular but what I don't know is whether it always had that tone or whether some people used it quite unselfconsciously at some earlier stage. By the way, I spent a fair chunk of my childhood addressing teachers as 'Miss!' and I don't think it was non-standard.
George said,
June 24, 2009 @ 11:35 am
@ Picky again. Incidentally, it's interesting that you wrote (in reference to my first comment) "It is, as you say, non-standard", when what I had written was "would have been considered a sign of somewhat uneducated speech".
In Ireland, 'non-standard' and 'uneducated' don't mean at all the same thing. What I mean is that there are a number of quite non-standard locutions in use in Ireland that don't carry any connotation of a lack of education. Hiberno-English is a perfectly 'respectable' dialect (within limits!), unlike, say, non-standard variants used in England.
George said,
June 24, 2009 @ 11:37 am
And I wasn't being picky there, Picky!
Coby Lubliner said,
June 24, 2009 @ 11:44 am
In the women's clothing (or ladies' apparel) departments of American department stores, the section for adult women of average size is called "Misses" (alongside "Women" for larger women and "Petites" for smaller ones). "Misses" is, as far as I can tell, pronounced the same as "Mrs."
Eyebrows McGee said,
June 24, 2009 @ 11:51 am
Now can someone solve the mystery of why my (college) students are incapable of addressing me as Ms. and insist on Mrs.?
Steve said,
June 24, 2009 @ 12:09 pm
@ Bloix (and off-topic for Ms.) With regard to the origins of the spelling of 'Jazz', there is a story (possibly apocryphal) that the early jazz band The Original Dixieland Jass Band (1916) changed the spelling of their name to 'jazz' because people kept crossing out the 'J' on posters.
Robert Coren said,
June 24, 2009 @ 12:12 pm
I remember that when "Ms." started becoming popular (1960s?), my mother remarked that certain regional dialects already had such a marriage-neutral title, usually spelled "Miz". Not that either she or I had much exposure to said dialects other than via the somewhat fanciful version used by Walt Kelly in Pogo, where all the women were "Miz", whether their marital status was married (Miz Rackety Coon), single (Miz Mamzell Hepzibah), or ambiguous (Miz Beaver).
Picky said,
June 24, 2009 @ 12:16 pm
@George: I accept your correction! Of course my mistake is a sign that I grew up thinking non-educated and non-standard English were the same. I'm, English, you see!
I understand what you say about "Miss", but I'm fairly sure an adult standard BrE speaker would only use it as a stand-alone address in a jocular way.
George said,
June 24, 2009 @ 12:27 pm
@ Picky, ah, English. Well, we have to make allowances for the Sassenachs… :)
George said,
June 24, 2009 @ 12:30 pm
@ Robert Coren. 'Miz Mamzell' is a fascinating one!
marie-lucie said,
June 24, 2009 @ 1:16 pm
@Picky: Here in Canada I would not normally address a strange woman as "Miss", unless I wanted to call the attention of young woman such as a salesgirl in a store. The point of being able to use "Miss" (even if it sounds uneducated) is that you cannot do the same with "Mrs" unless you know her name, and "Madam" or "Ma'am" (in North America at least) only seems appropriate for a very mature woman (although in some stores the staff are told to address everyone except children as "Sir" or "Ma'am"). I don't remember having been addressed as "Missis". "Madame" or "Signora" (and the male equivalents) are so much more convenient since you don't need to know the name of the person.
@RC: about Southern "Miz", my impression was (just from reading, not actual experience) that it is often followed by the woman's first name, and that it seems to be used by underlings, for instance servants who know the family well but "keep their place". This is similar to the use of "Miss" by servants in 19th century England, except that it does not stop with the woman's marriage.
Stephen Jones said,
June 24, 2009 @ 2:14 pm
'Miss' was also used in the UK as a term of address for female schoolteachers, irrespective of age or marital status. The masculine form is 'Sir'.
mollymooly said,
June 24, 2009 @ 2:50 pm
@George:
I'm not sure about your phrasing. 'Standard' Irish English, as spoken by educated Irish people includes some features which are non-standard elsewhere (e.g. "amn't, "haitch"). 'Non-standard' Irish English includes things looked down on by the educated, like "I done dem tings dere" for "I did those things there". Of course, the diving line is undefined and disputed: to speak 'standard', one must somehow plot a middle course between the untutored vernacular of the ill-bred and the effete cultural cringe of the West British.
Regarding "missus", Irish women and girls often address each other thus in jocular mock vexation, much as a mother might call her naughty daughter "madam".
George said,
June 24, 2009 @ 4:37 pm
@ Mollymooly,
I suppose it's a question of definitions. I'm Irish and my understanding of what constitutes 'Standard English' is the same as an English person's. Although it's not what I speak myself on a day-to-day basis (which would be what you refer to as 'Standard' Irish English), I can switch into it at will when I'm with non-Irish people who might not understand certain distinctly Irish locutions.
Regarding the examples you give, I would consider 'amn't', unless used in a jocular way, to be the sort of thing that an educated person might not exactly look down on but would certainly consider incorrect. But yes, we simply pronounce the name of the letter 'h' the way we do. "I done dem tings dere", on the other hand, is more redolent of a certain type of English comic (thankfully less common today than in the past) than of actually existing Irish people!
Bob Ladd said,
June 26, 2009 @ 3:13 am
On the topic of using Miss as a term of address for schoolteachers (which, as a couple of commenters have said, seems to have been widespread in British English until fairly recently): something very similar is true in Dutch, but with a twist. Until the 1960s, Dutch distinguished married (Mevrouw X) and unmarried (Juffrouw X) women in the same way as most other Western European languages, and, like many other Western European languages, began to use Mevrouw (usually abbreviated Mevr.) for all adult women about the same time that Ms. began to gain acceptance in North American English. In most contexts, juffrouw now sounds like something out of a bygone age. But it lives on, often shortened to juf, as a term of address for female schoolteachers especially in primary school, and – here's the twist – it's also widely used as a common noun to mean 'female primary school teacher' (e.g. De juf is naar huis gegaan 'The teacher went home').
mollymooly said,
June 26, 2009 @ 10:53 am
I mentioned the difficulty of plotting a middle course; I was well out of college before I discovered foreigners don't say "amn't"; and I regard "aren't I" as a hopelessly effete West Briticism. Your kilometrage may vary.
While I would avoid conscious Hibernicisms in the presence of foreigners, I would switch differently depending on whether the audience was British, American or whatever; in other words, I would be switching from Irish standard to one of several foreign standards, not switching from non-standard to a fixed Standard.
Picky said,
June 26, 2009 @ 1:41 pm
Surely "amn't I" – apart from being much less odd, though no more uneffete, than "aren't I" – is not just a Hibernicism but a Caledonianism, too, and possibly common further afield?
Terry Collmann said,
June 27, 2009 @ 1:01 pm
My wife, who is middle-class Irish, certainly uses "amn't I" unselfconsciously. She is also a teacher in a British junior school (for children six to 11 years old), and while she has kept her maiden name, she prefers to be called by the children "MRS Maidenname" rather than "Miss Maidenname". My impression, based on her school and the one my daughter goes to, is that today British schoolchildren call ALL female teachers recognisable as at least as old as their mothers "Mrs", regardless of their actual or admitted marital status, but I'm prepared to be told I'm wrong on that …