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Mrs. (American English) [1] or Mrs (British English; [2] [3] standard English pronunciation: / ˈ m ɪ s ɪ z / ⓘ MISS-iz) is a commonly used English honorific for women, usually for those who are married and who do not instead use another title or rank, such as Doctor, Professor, President, Dame, etc.
In the English language, an honorific is a form of address conveying esteem, courtesy or respect. These can be titles prefixing a person's name, e.g.: Mr, Mrs, Miss, Ms, Mx, Sir, Dame, Dr, Cllr, Lady, or Lord, or other titles or positions that can appear as a form of address without the person's name, as in Mr President, General, Captain, Father, Doctor, or Earl.
The most common honorifics in modern English are usually placed immediately before a person's name. Honorifics used (both as style and as form of address) include, in the case of a man, "Mr." (irrespective of marital status), and, in the case of a woman, previously either of two depending on marital status: "Miss" if unmarried and "Mrs." if married, widowed, or divorced; more recently, a third ...
Monsieur" (M.) for a man, The plural is Messieurs (MM. for short). "Madame" (Mme) for a woman. The plural is Mesdames (Mmes). "Mademoiselle" (Mlle) is a traditional alternative for an unmarried woman. The plural is Mesdemoiselles (Mlles). Usage of "Mademoiselle" varies based on regions and ideology.
Miss and Mrs., both derived from the then formal Mistress, like Mister did not originally indicate marital status. [8] [9] Ms. was another acceptable abbreviation for Mistress in England in the 17th and 18th centuries. [10] During the 19th century, however, Mrs. and Miss came to be associated almost exclusively with marital status. [11]
The modern plural form is Misters [citation needed], although its usual formal abbreviation Messrs(.) [note 1] derives from use of the French title messieurs in the 18th century. [2] [5] Messieurs is the plural of monsieur (originally mon sieur, "my lord"), formed by declining both of its constituent parts separately. [5]
Madam (/ ˈ m æ d əm /), or madame (/ ˈ m æ d əm / or / m ə ˈ d ɑː m /), [1] is a polite and formal form of address for women in the English language, often contracted to ma'am [2] (pronounced / ˈ m æ m / in American English [2] and this way but also / ˈ m ɑː m / in British English [3]).
In linguistics, an honorific (abbreviated HON) is a grammatical or morphosyntactic form that encodes the relative social status of the participants of the conversation. . Distinct from honorific titles, linguistic honorifics convey formality FORM, social distance, politeness POL, humility HBL, deference, or respect through the choice of an alternate form such as an affix, clitic, grammatical ...