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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Miss
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and Mrs Both words are abbreviations of 'mistress', from the time when that word was the feminine of 'master'. Since the late 17C unmarried women have been called 'Miss' and married women 'Mrs' (pronounced 'missis', though the written form is an abbreviation of the full 'mistress'). At that time both titles were limited to women of the upper and middle class, likely to become mistress of a household employing servants. In most European countries unmarried women above a certain age are addressed as married women (madame rather than mademoiselle).
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The British have rigidly kept to 'Miss' regardless of age, making the elderly spinster a characteristic figure of national life and literature. In the 1970s and 1980s the American 'Ms' was often used to avoid this intrusive distinction, but a more recent trend has been to dispense with prefixes altogether, addressing people by their given and family names (Mary Smith rather than Ms Smith).
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