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- Master is someone who has control of something — someone who is in charge.
- Today, this word is used in a broader sense, but once it was an honorific title, i.e., it was used for a socially superior male.
- Similarly, ‘mistress’ was used to refer to a socially superior female.
- And like for master people used the abbreviation Mr, for mistress people used Mrs.
- However, Mrs could be used for both married and unmarried women.
- By the 1600s, the word mistress received some disreputable definitions.
- E.g., it was now used to mean “a woman other than his wife with whom a man has a long-lasting sexual relationship.”
- And as the word’s association with this definition became stronger, people became uncomfortable using mistress in a positive connotation.
- They started pronouncing the-positive-connotation ‘mistress’ as ‘missus’, but the abbreviation Mrs continued (why missus was chosen is still unclear).
- At the same time, another word — ‘miss’ — evolved to mean an unmarried woman.
- This word, till the late 1700s, was used as a title only for young girls.
- As ‘miss’ became acceptable to mean young unmarried woman, Mrs began signifying married woman.
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Image courtesy of Craig Adderley through Pexels
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