titles

My most brilliant thoughts come at night, when I rotate positions in my little bed every five seconds, when the sounds on the road once muted are now sounds in my ears, when thoughts are swimming in my head and I'm turning them over and over in completely illogical succession. The house is silent; no one is about in the house, moving chairs, laughing loudly at nextdoor neighbors, or playing video games at ridiculous volumes, because daylight savings didn't affect others the way it did me (and we don't have an extra guitar anymore for Guitar Hero - thank you, Coby). I jolt. These are my thoughts.

Why oh why do we pronounce:

• Mr. = miss-ter
  
• Mrs. = mizzes, so why the 'r'?
• Ms. (my favorite, it clouds the singularity), mizz
• Miss = this one is easy

Think about that one for a minute.

Or

This is what my research tells me (thanks wikipedia)

• Mr. = abbreviation for 'mister,' though the original form is seldom used. Mr. is a term for an older man under the rank of knight who can no longer be called master. The plural form is Messrs - shortened for messieurs (the French form).
  
• Mrs., Ms., Miss = all variants of mistress (French word, again).
  
• Mrs. is now used exclusively for married women. But it once was a title for women who did not qualify for 'dame' or 'lady.'
• Ms. is an ambiguous term, well in terms of marriage. It's pretty clear that she's a woman if she's using Ms. (at least we hope).
  
• Miss indicates that a woman is not married; she is not entitled to a higher title (ha!

So if this interests you at all, there's a plethora of information on wikipedia (and I'm sure a number of other sources).