Ms.
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.
Meaning & usage
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.
Ms Jane Doe; Ms. Roe
Title used for a woman before a place, name, thing, or description that she is supposed to typify or represent.
Ms Efficiency and Ms Right
Where this word comes from
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.
plural of M
Where this word comes from
See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.
Abbreviation of mesyl.
Where this word comes from
From a shortening of its name.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.