Quote:
Originally Posted by CFrance
Hmm... when I was student teacher in Atlanta in 1969, it was customary for kids to call their teachers Miss plus their first name, even if the teacher was married. My dil's students call her Miss Jodi even though she's a Mrs.
When we were getting our FL drivers licenses and car registration here last month, the lady called me Miss Cyndy and my husband Mr. Raymond. We thought it was a southern custom. Yes? No?
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Atlanta might be a bit more urban south than I know about, but in my rural FL schools we said Miz and last name, didn't need to know if they were married, as Mrs. and Miss were (sensibly) articulated the same.
Mrs. - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary contains southern pronunciation...
Mrs, pronounced as misses, sounds like the plural of miss, which is silly.
so back to madame and the French derivation of Mrs., short for mistress, how we collapsed that into misses to mean wife, I don't know...but the original, mistress, now means an unwife.
Online Etymology Dictionary