It’s also ‘traditional’ for a woman to take on her husband’s last name. Nowadays though, more and more women prefer not to do so. Are they also ‘distancing themselves from their husbands’? No. It’s just a way to retain your own individuality, should you choose to.
Or possibly an overgeneralization - there was at least one TV show in the '70s (maybe more) with at least one character (maybe more) who pronounced “Ms.” as “em ess” . But it wasn’t a mistake or as a variant dialect - it was meant to ridicule the character who used “Ms” rather than “Miss” or “Mrs”. But a non-native English speaker may not have picked that up.
You’re missing the category of people who feel they are gender ambiguous and want the world to acknowledge that.
Never heard it that way. Always “Mizz”, although that sometimes gets said as “Miss” while intending to be the non-specifying version.
I live in Texas, and we still call people by the titles “sir” and “ma’am”. And yes, I’m aware there’s a certain ageism in some dialects between using “miss” and “ma’am”. That one is going away here. In karate class, we address the teenage girl instructors as ma’am, not miss. As in, “Yes, ma’am.”
And the tendency is to use “Miss” as the non-specifying ambiguous version used for single or married women. Or else they’re just pronouncing Ms. as “miss”.
Interesting, thanks for that.
I also once thought that, but I think I got corrected on it at some point in my teens.
And you’re right about all of them being vocally very similar. I always try to use “Ms.”, but I’m pretty sure that when I actually say it, it comes out as closer to “Miss”.
One Day at a Time, Ann’s not-terrible boss in the middle seasons would call her M S Romano. (As he was the not-terrible boss, it wasn’t so much ridicule as mild teasing. The terrible, actively sexist boss called her Ann.)
When I was growing up in Ohio in the ‘70s we pronounced Mrs., Ms., and Miss identically in conversation [ms̬ˈheɪz] could be Mrs. Hayes, Ms. Hayes, or Miss Hayes.
It’s in there. if you read between the lines.
“For oral use it might be rendered as ‘Mizz,’ which would be a close parallel to the practice long universal in many bucolic regions, where a slurred Mis’ does duty for Miss and Mrs alike.”
“Bucolic regions” referring to the rural South.
One of the very few neologisms relating to personal address that became widely accepted, and did so pretty much overnight, in the sense of over five years or so.
Someone else cited this I think, but here it is again:
So, it didn’t happen within five years or so. It took about 70 years from the time of the article in The Republican. It got its critical boost in popular culture terms by Gloria Steinem’s decision to use “Ms.” as the name of her magazine, but it wasn’t an absolute neologism in the 1970s.
Furthermore, it’s not ex nihilo. According to Wiktionary: “Found since the 1600s as an abbreviation of mistress.”
So, “Ms.” is actually an abbreviation. It’s an abbreviation of “mistress,” which is also what “Mrs.” and “Miss” are. The three abbreviations have different uses and differing meanings, but they’re all abbreviations for the same word.
It may have been around for 70 years, but virtually nobody knew of it until it was popularized in the 70s. Once it gained currency, it was accepted quite quickly.
It percolated in the culture for 70 years (and really for a couple of centuries prior to that) until it found a hook for widespread popularity. That’s the opposite of “overnight.” I’m no linguistic expert, but I would guess that arc of popularity is fairly common when it comes to words.
Not exclusive to me, but it might be a matter of Spanish speakers. I learned it in Miami; encountered it again in Philly, where the Southern Lady had been teaching it to the team, but the Southern Lady was originally from Miami (her Spanish was limited but intense).