Source etymology 1
Original entry ↗Title used before an adult woman's name or surname, especially when it is not desired or possible to indicate her marital status with Miss or Mrs. · Title used for a woman before a place, name, thing, or description that she is supposed to typify or represent.
Found since the 1600s as an abbreviation of mistress (whence also Miss and Mrs), a title which initially did not indicate marital status. Suggestions that the term be revived began in 1901, and referenced the fact that dialects such as Southern US English already made no distinction between Miss and Mrs (/ˈmɪz/) in speech. With the founding of the magazine Ms. in 1971, the term quickly became widespread as an alternative to Miss and Mrs., which require knowing (and publicizing) the referent's marital status.
Inspect preserved source fields
Raw extraction fields are retained for auditing. Their order does not establish ancestry.
{
"templates": [],
"links": [
[
"mistress",
"mistress#English"
],
[
"Miss",
"Miss#English"
],
[
"Mrs",
"Mrs#English"
]
],
"references": [],
"descendants": [],
"lexical": [
{
"pos": "noun",
"glosses": [
"Title used before an adult woman's name or surname, especially when it is not desired or possible to indicate her marital status with Miss or Mrs.",
"Title used for a woman before a place, name, thing, or description that she is supposed to typify or represent."
],
"tags": [],
"recordId": "c70f2f8aca889aa208ac55184851f5a12e8586a1533e5f9c93363d432b19818c",
"rawRecordSha256": "93a5dd7ef6430963c30438a251ed1181ec75ba55ba89d440cda767fa33888b39",
"sourceRecordOrdinal": 212358
}
],
"omittedAuxiliaryFields": {
"templates": 0,
"links": 0,
"references": 0,
"descendants": 0,
"lexicalRecords": 0,
"lexicalSenses": 0,
"glosses": 0
}
}