Mrs
English
    
    
Etymology
    
From mistress.
Pronunciation
    
- IPA(key): /ˈmɪsɪz/, /ˈmɪsəz/
- Audio (US) - (file) 
- Audio (UK) - (file) 
- Rhymes: -ɪsɪz
 
- (US dialects, especially Southern American English, Michigan) enPR: mĭs IPA(key): /ˈmɪs/, /ˈmɪz/
Noun
    
Mrs (plural Mmes or Mesdames or (rare) Mrses)
- Abbreviation of Missus or Mistress (used before an adult woman's name or surname, used for any high-status woman without regard to marital status until the 1800s, after which it began to be reserved for married, divorced and widowed women and used with their married surnames)
- 1775, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The Rivals:- Mrs Malaprop said, “He’s as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile.”
 
- 1891, Thomas Hardy, chapter IV, in Tess of the d’Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented […], volume I, London: James R[ipley] Osgood, McIlvaine and Co., […], →OCLC, phase the first (The Maiden), pages 40–41:- In a large bedroom upstairs, the window of which was thickly curtained with a great woollen shawl lately discarded by the landlady, Mrs. Rolliver, were gathered on this evening nearly a dozen persons, all seeking vinous bliss; all old inhabitants of the nearer end of Marlott, and frequenters of this retreat.
 
- 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:- There were many wooden chairs for the bulk of his visitors, and two wicker armchairs with red cloth cushions for superior people. From the packing-cases had emerged some Indian clubs, […], and all these articles […] made a scattered and untidy decoration that Mrs. Clough assiduously dusted and greatly cherished.
 
 
Coordinate terms
    
Descendants
    
- → Yiddish: מיסעס (mises)
Translations
    
title before a woman's name
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