There are a couple of odd things about the title Mrs. First, the word it stands for, missus, looks strange written out that way in full. In fact, except in the jokey context of âthe missus,â meaning the wife, you almost never see it written out. âMissus Clausâ looks far more awkward than âMister Rogers.â Second, the abbreviation has an ârâ in it, and the word doesnât. Why is there an ârâ in Mrs.?
Originally, Mrs. was an abbreviation for mistress, the female counterpart of master. There were various spellings for both formsâit might be maistresse/maistre or maystres/maysterâand variation in pronunciation too. The word mistress had a more general meaning of a woman who is in charge of something. A governess in charge of children was a mistress, as was a woman head of a household. The abbreviated form was used most frequently as a title for a married woman.
Eventually, the title form took on a contracted, ârâ-less pronunciation, and by the end of the 18th century âmissisâ was the most acceptable way to say it. (A 1791 pronouncing dictionary said that to pronounce it âmistressâ would âappear quaint and pedantic.â) The full word mistress had by then come to stand for a paramour, someone who was explicitly not a Mrs.
The pronunciation of Mr. also underwent a change, from âmasterâ to âmister.â But there was already a written word mister, meaning an occupation, trade, or skill (related to mĂ©tier) so that when Mr. was written out that way it didnât look awkward. Missus, however, was first written out as a rough approximation of lower class dialect, the way servants in Dickens talked of their mistresses, for example. Even though everyone was pronouncing Mrs. as âmissus,â they avoided writing it that way because it was just too casual. It would be like writing Ms. as Miz. Sometimes a title is not an abbreviation for a word, but a word all of its own.
Author: Arika Okrent
Source: Mental Floss
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