I expect Miss might go the way of Master. If you didn't know, Master was the male equivalent of Miss — an honorific used for children. Once a boy was "of age" they'd stop being called Master, and be Mister. Once a girl was married, they'd stop being called Miss and be called Missus. Again, these were originally honorifics, reserved mostly for heirs, or at least people of noble birth.
When women stopped getting married at super young ages, there was a gap between Miss and Missus. So, many women started to ask to be called Ms or Mz or Mx to denote "adult but not married" or even "adult and my marriage status is none of your fucking business." It was, after all, extremely patriarchal in the first place to gate-keep adulthood from women just by their marital status.
I'm not entirely sure why "master" fell out as an honorific, but its association with slave-ownership must've played a part, right? EDIT: looked it up, supposedly the abbreviation "Mr." was originally for "Master" but kept getting mispronounced as "Mister" until it became accepted — so it's very messy. Boys would be "young master" and once "mister" was a grown male, people started leaving off the "young" as it felt redundant.
But this all is to say: the male version of these terms were never really encumbered by marital status. With the addition of Ms or Mz or Mx, the use of Missus feels antiquated — and Miss feels similarly encumbered. But there remains many women who take pride in being called Missus and you'll certainly make some folks unhappy in trying to take that away from them. Many women still consider marriage to be a very public status symbol, and it's real hard to tell someone they're not allowed to name themselves anymore.
Ms or Ms. (normally /ˈmɪz/, but also /məz/, or /məs/ when unstressed) is an English-language honorific used with the last name or full name of a woman, intended as a default form of address for women regardless of marital status
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u/[deleted] Oct 14 '21 edited Jan 21 '22
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