What does "Ms." stand for? [closed]

In letter writing, there are four different titles to address:

Mr.
Mrs.
Miss.
Ms.

What does Ms. stand for? Apparently as Mrs. and Miss already stand for female titles, Ms. stood for "Master", the title for a boy or a young man, similar to Miss. But the other day, my friend told me it stood for "Miscellaneous" and could be used for anyone. Is this true?

Solution 1:

Your friend is wrong on that one. The honorific "Ms." is the general term used when addressing a woman.

In the US it's used to refer to a woman regardless of marital status. Since you would use "Miss" to refer to a (younger) lady who is not married, and "Mrs" to address a lady who is married (regardless of age), "Ms" can be useful as a catch all term to use if you don't wish to cause offence by guessing whether the lady is a "Miss" or a "Mrs".

In the UK, Ms used to be reserved for a woman who had been (but was no longer) married, although now the US and UK meanings seem to have merged.

Also, it's pronounced "Miz" (at least in the UK), so is pronounced slightly differently to "Miss", which is worth knowing.

Solution 2:

From my understanding (an Australian one), the title is pronounced "Mizz" and is used in essentially a non-committal fashion. Here, it is generally used by single women who don't want to be known as "Miss", or by women in a marriage or de-facto relationship who don't want to be a "Missus".

Solution 3:

According to OED:

Ms. |miz|

noun

a title used before the surname or full name of any woman regardless of her marital status (a neutral alternative to Mrs. or Miss): Ms. Sarah Brown.

• humorous used before an invented surname to imply that someone has a particular characteristic: Ms. Do-Right.

ORIGIN 1950s: combination of Mrs. and miss².