ladies and gentlemen

   The normal formula used to address a mixed gathering. It is occasionally varied, as in Gideon Planish, by Sinclair Lewis, where a professor addresses his students as ‘young ladies and gentlemen’.

   In another of Lewis’s novels, Main Street, Sam Clark introduces the heroine to her new neighbours with: ‘Ladies and worser halves, the bride!’ The allusion, of course, is to ‘better half’, which has been used to describe a wife, according to Eric Partridge in his Dictionary of Historical Slang, since the late sixteenth century, though the phrase is not used vocatively. Sam Clark could just have easily said ‘Folks’ or ‘Friends’, much as Mr Pickwick does at one point, having begun a speech more formally (see also quotation under Friend). Another semi-formal usage occurs in Main Street, when Dr Gould says ‘Ladies and gents’. In Deborah, by Marian Castle, occurs: ‘Ladeez and gentlemun - if any!’