Homework time for the daughter. She shows me the popular abbreviated salutation for a woman that my grandmother described to me (her words) as a woman who was too mean to find a husband or too bitchy to admit she had one:
Ms.
Is there a full spelling for that word?
Nope, that’s it. With a period for the US, no period in the UK.
Now it’s derived (like Miss and Mrs.) from Mistress, so if it’s a crossword and you need 8 letters… 
Must be better in the UK. *ducks 
Oh, thanks for the answer.
I’m told that the punctuation mark goes by the name “full stop” in the UK. Or is that only for ending a declarative sentence, allowing “period” to refer to the dot at the end of an abbreviation (whose terminal letter is different from that of the word it abbreviates)?
IMHO, the full spelling is “Ms” (no period anywhere in the known universe since it is not an abbreviation of anything).
That would probably come as something of a shock to the editors of Ms. Magazine. Or the US Government, who has used the “Ms.” form in official documents since the early '70s.
In the US, accepted usage for titles are: Mister, Miss, Mrs., Ms.
Since we don’t have any grammar police, once you’re out of school, you’re free to do as you like, but Ms. is far more common than Ms here.
Ms. and Mrs. are both contractions of Mistress.
Etymology online says it’s “a blend of Miss and Mrs”. If that is correct it is based on the word “mistress”, but not actually an abbreviation.
Mrs. is an abbreviation of Misses (I think).
“Near Miss”?
I believe that’s putting the cart before the horse. “Mrs.” is an abbreviation of “mistress” (note the “r”), and “missus” (or “missis,” but not “misses” which is the plural of “miss”) is a phonetic rendering of how “Mrs.” is pronounced. So first “mistress,” then “Mrs.,” then “missus.”
Mrs. = Missus
That’s not what your link says. It says exactly what Gary T wrote, that “missus” is how you pronounce “Mrs.”
:mad:
And the plural of both “Mrs” and “Ms” is Mmes (or Mesdames in full) from French.
The plurals are seldom used in modern writting, but according to Miss Manners would be correct when addressing a formal wedding invitation to a lesbian couple with the same surname.