Is that Miss or Ms? Oldest "Ms." might not have feminist origins after all

[Dennis Baron]

There's a new post on the Web of Language:

Is that Miss or Ms?  Oldest "Ms." might not have feminist origins  
after all

Word hunter Ben Zimmer reports the earliest sighting so far of “the  
elusive first Ms.” The word, an alternative to the marriage-specific  
titles Miss and Mrs, turns out to be over 100 years old. . . .

Zimmer didn’t need carbon dating to determine that the article about  
Ms. appeared on Nov. 10, 1901, under the heading “Men, Women and  
Affairs” in the Springfield (Massachusetts) Sunday Republican (page 4,  
below the fold), and it recommended Ms. as a term to be used when you  
don’t know a woman’s marital status.

. . . find out more about this early "Ms." citation. Read the whole  
post on the Web of Language:    http://www.illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage

____________________
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

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