Mr and Mrs seem like given titles for those that choose to walk down the aisle and say ‘I do’. Have you ever wondered where these titles come from? The origin might surprise you.
The titles originally had nothing to do with marital status. Cambridge University historian Dr. Amy Erickson explains that ‘Mrs’ and ‘Miss’ derived from the word ‘mistress’ while ‘Mr’ comes from ‘master’.
“Few people realise that ‘Mistress’ is the root word of both of the abbreviations ‘Mrs,’ and ‘Miss,’ just as Mr is an abbreviation of ‘Master.’ The ways that words derived from Mistress have developed their own meanings is quite fascinating and shifts in these meanings can tell us a lot about the changing status of women in society, at home and in the workplace,” she said
According to author Samuel Johnson, a mistress could be defined as “1. A woman who governs; correlative to subject or servant; 2. A woman skilled in anything; 3. A woman teacher; 4. A woman beloved and courted; 5. A term of contemptuous address; 6. A whore or concubine.”
Back in the mid-18th century, ‘mistress’ didn’t have quite the negative connotations it has today. In those days, a mistress typically referred to a woman of high economic or social capital, rather than a married woman. A woman referred to as Mrs in the 18th century was thus not necessarily married.
Those on the lower scales of society were simply referred to by their names. For example, the lady of the house might have been Mrs Abernathy, while the scullery maid would simply be Anna Black.
Mr and Mrs were on equal standing, and Erickson argues those that held these titles were more like businessmen and women as they governed servants or apprentices, and were quite literally the masters and mistresses of their trades.
It was only in the late 18th century that the use of Mrs became attached to marital status. The title Miss, which was originally a title for young girls, started to be used as a term to refer to an unmarried woman of a high social status, who was often a teacher. These young, socially ambitious single women wanted their own title that would mark their social class but not lump them into a group with the older businesswomen and heads of households that typically held the title of Mrs.
This new term thus shifted the meaning of Mrs to signify a married woman and create a distinction between young and older.
Why the pronunciation of mistress turned to ‘missus’ is unclear. In A Critical Pronouncing Dictionary, and Expositor of the English Language from 1828, author John Walker suggests its a result of colloquialism.
“The same haste and necessity of dispatch, which has corrupted Master into Mister, has, when a title of civility only, contracted Mistress into Missis,” he wrote.
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