Antedating of "Ms."

[Dennis Baron]

I found a jpg of that tombstone online -- I don't think ads-l lets me  
attach images to messages, so here is the link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/40083302@N00/2656841420

I'm assuming it's an undoctored photo -- I haven't seen the tombstone  
myself.

Note that the stonecutter abbreviates by carving M with a superscript  
S (hard to see -- I adjusted contrast in photoshop and enlarged a tiff  
of the image to get some detail),  a common way to abbreviate (see  
similar practice on the stone with Yr for year).

Fred Shapiro just sent me a pdf of the Salt Lake Daily Tribune page,  
and the article is straightforward in proposing Ms as an alternative  
to Miss or Mrs when one doesn't know the marital status of the person  
address. The writer suggests pronouncing Ms. as "mizz" -- the voiced  
form being usefully ambiguous "in many bucolic regions" where Miss and  
Mrs. are similarly pronounced (of course in non-"bucolic" usage Miss  
is voiceless, and that's the pronunciation I had found for Miss dating  
from the 40s or 50s.. To use a technical linguistics term, this find  
is way, way cool.

Alas, Springfield Mo. is quite a schlep from central illinois (well,  
everything is, pretty much) but I'm tempted to call the Springfield  
library and ask for an image of the Springfield Republican page, if  
they'll make one for me from their microfilm.


Dennis
____________________
Dennis Baron
Professor of English and Linguistics
Department of English
University of Illinois
608 S. Wright St.
Urbana, IL 61801

office: 217-244-0568
fax: 217-333-4321

http://www.illinois.edu/goto/debaron

read the Web of Language:
http://www.illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage








On Jun 22, 2009, at 11:54 AM, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header  
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Antedating of "Ms."
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Quoting Randy Alexander:
>
>> On Tue, Jun 23, 2009 at 12:26 AM, Ann Burlingham wrote:
>>>> The OED's first use for the form of address "Ms." is from a Dec.  
>>>> 4, 1901
>> Iowa newspaper. Â The Iowa article is referring to prior usage in the
>> Springfield (Mass.) Republican. Â I have not yet traced the original
>> Springfield article, but I have found an earlier other newspaper  
>> reprinting
>> the Springfield article. Â In the Newspaperarchive database, the  
>> Salt Lake
>> Tribune, Nov. 17, 1901, p. 21, reprints the Springfield article,  
>> including
>> the use of the term "Ms."
>>>
>>> I'm surprised by this, though maybe I'm missing a nuance here, but I
>>> know I read Miss Manners, in her discussion of "Ms." referring to at
>>> least a century's-older usage.
>>
>> http://archive.salon.com/mwt/feature/2000/07/27/ms/index.html
>>
>> "They might be surprised to learn that modern feminists did not come
>> up with Ms. in the first place. The title's earliest documented
>> appearance was on the 1767 tombstone of a Massachusetts woman named
>> Sarah Spooner. "
>>
>> A few other pages mention this (google: "sarah spooner" 1767 ms).
>> Some suggest it to be an isolated case, with no connection (through
>> continuity in use) with the 20th century.
>
> See also Dennis Baron's _Grammar and Gender_ (p. 167):
>
> "The title _Ms_ appears on the tombstone of Sarah Spooner, who died  
> in 1767 in
> Plymouth, Massachusetts, but it is certainly an abbreviation of  
> _Miss_ or
> _Mistress_, and not an example of colonial langurage reform or a  
> slip of the
> chisel, as some have suggested."
>
>
> --Ben Zimmer
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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