Re: You have a word for it?

>On Mon, 28 Jan 2002, Dennis Paul Himes wrote:
>
>>     It seems in reading this discussion that people are assuming that
"Miss"
>> means a woman is not married and "Mrs." means that she is.  This is a
>> convention which some people use, but it is not the convention I was
taught
>> and was not the prescriptivist convention used by (for instance) the New
>> York Times back before it belatedly adopted "Ms."  The convention I
learned
>> is that "Mrs." is used for a woman who is using a husband's surname, and
>> "Miss" is used otherwise.  So a divorced woman who kept her married name
>> would be "Mrs.", and a married woman who kept her maiden name would be
>> "Miss".
That is probably true for (as you note) prescriptivist usage in the past.
(And note that it still focuses on marital status.)  But I think "miss" came
to have a sense of '_young_and marriageable' (hence not yet a full member of
society); and the lumping together of "Miss Perkins" e.g. who is announcing
her debut or engagement, with "Miss Perkins" (FDR's Secy of Labor-- the
Janet Reno of those days), finally came to seem odd and grating to the
sensibilities.  Especially as more women went to work in higher status jobs.
How embarassing to address a newly-met attorney or sales rep., 'how do you
do, Mrs. Smith' only to be corrected-- 'Um, it's Miss...' or conversely,
'nice to meet you Miss Smith'--'Um, it's Mrs....'  Awkward and unnecessary
all around.

And Steve Kramer wrote:
>
>Her feeling on the matter is that "Ms." is pronounced /mis/ - not what she
>was taught, but what appears to be most evident in practice.
Ms. is /mis/??? not /miz/??? Kind of defeats the purpose of it all, doesn't
it?  Of course, there are individuals, and perhaps even regions, that don't
appreciate the current use of Ms.