What is the difference between Ms and Miss?

Answer 1

== == Women are getting more independent in these modern days so "Miss" means the woman is single, and "Ms." could be a single woman or a married woman. If you were to send a letter to someone and you weren't sure if the woman was married or not you would put "Ms. Smith." Also, some women today are also keeping their surnames after marriage (go by their surname and not their husbands last name) while others will link their surname with that of their new husbands. Eg: Her name is Smith and his is Johnson, so she'd go by "Mary Smith-Johnson." Some women will do this especially if they are in business. "Miss" and "Mrs" are both contractions of "Mistress". "Ms", pronounced "mizz", appeared in the early 20th century as further contraction of both titles which is independent of marital status. [SOED 6th ed]

Answer 2

Miss used to mean an unmarried female, officially a 'spinster', a young woman or someone who had allegedly Missed out. An unmarried aunt was often referred to as a 'maiden aunt'.

Mrs (Missus) means 'wife of'. While ostensibly translated as 'mistress' (a term now denoting something between a mister and a mattress) it was more correctly understood in the possessive sense.

Until the 1970s the wife of a Mr (Mister) John Smith was officially addressed as Mrs John Smith. As divorce became less of a stigma and marriage became optional, single-again women began to object to being addressed as a Mister's property, when the title of Mr revealed nothing of a man's marital status. The term 'Master' for lads in short pants or the firstborn son of a wealthy family had long been out of use.

Ms was the liberated, working woman's choice of address, even though she couldn't pronounce it. Ms coincided with equal opportunity, computer word processing, databases and mass mail-outs, making it so much cheaper to address spam to all females as Ms -- until, to the mailing houses' surprise, too many very married women and elderly spinsters insisted on their correct, respectable titles. Ms was just too scandalous for them, and they couldn't pronounce it either.

Answer 3

The usage of the word "Miss" means that a woman is not married. On the other hand, "Ms." (which is pronounced "Miz") can be used for a woman who is either single or married -- in the same way that "Mr." is used for a man; it makes no difference whether he is married or not.

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Answer 4

miss is what you call somebody unmarried

ms is what some people prefer to be called if they don't want you to know whether or not they are married