mistress

[Victor Steinbok]

I have a fairly basic question--this is where ESL and insufficient
fiction reading come into play.

Here's a sentence from today's story.

http://goo.gl/5M1IT
> Arkansas fired head coach Bobby Petrino on Tuesday, publicly dressing
> him down for unfairly hiring his mistress and intentionally misleading
> his boss about everything from their relationship to her presence at
> the motorcycle accident that ultimately cost him his job.

For the most part, it seems, it is married men who get to have
mistresses. Unmarried men tend to have other sorts of partners. OED more
or less bears it out.

> 7. A woman other than his wife with whom a man has a long-lasting
> sexual relationship.

But this does not actually say that the /man/ has to be married--all it
says is that the object of his relationship is a female other than one
he is married to. I suppose, there is a backhanded implication that he
/has/ a wife, but it's not entirely definitive. (The sentence is
actually a nice example of the particular structure, but I am not
looking at that at the moment.)

So my question is 1) is it true that the term "mistress" applies only to
a non-marital partner of a /married/ man? and 2) Has it ever applied
more generally?

For a parallel, consider "adultery".

> 1.a. Voluntary sexual intercourse between a married person and another
> who is not his or her spouse, regarded as a violation of the marriage
> vows and hence as a sin or crime; the state or condition of having
> committed this.
>  b. In extended use: any illicit sexual intercourse or activity; lust,
> debauchery, fornication.

Both have equally long history, but there was, I believe, a period where
the first one dominated discourse.

     VS-)

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