"Mistress"

[Wilson Gray]

And what's up with that nursery rhyme,

Mistress Mary
Quite contrary

etc.?

-Wilson

On Fri, Aug 22, 2008 at 10:27 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: "Mistress"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 8/22/2008 06:11 PM, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
>>On Aug 22, 2008, at 2:47 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>>
>>>At 8/22/2008 01:02 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>>>>"Mistress" is _not what you think_, you filthy-minded beggars!
>>>
>>>A genuinely serious question -- what was it (predominantly) in
>>>mid-18th century America?  From a Boston newspaper:
>>>
>>>"On Saturday Evening ... one Ez kiel N-d m of this Town, and another
>>>Young Man ... was going over to Roxbury to see their Mistresses ..."
>>
>>if i read my OED right, this sense isn't there, and i find that
>>surprising.  it's such a natural sense development.
>
> Just which sense did you think *I* had in mind, you dirty old
> man?  :-)  In any case, they're both there, I think (at least now;
> draft revision June 2008); I had checked before writing about this tidbit.
>
> {dag}6. a. A woman loved and courted by a man; a female sweetheart. Obs.
>   By the late 19th cent. this usage was generally avoided as liable
> to be mistaken for sense A. 7.
>
> 7. A woman other than his wife with whom a man has a long-lasting
> sexual relationship. In early use: {dag}a woman notorious for some act (obs.).
>
> (Both have earliest cites circa 1425-1440 and were in use in the 18th
> century.  My question is which sense would be taken in my quotation,
> or is it perhaps intentionally and humorously ambiguous?)
>
> Joel
>
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All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
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