ma’am

   A spelling which indicates a colloquial pronunciation of ‘madam’. John Dryden makes it clear that such pronunciation was in early use: ‘Madam me no madam, but learn to retrench your words; and say mam; as yes mam, and no mam, as other ladies’ women do. Madam! ‘tis a year in pronouncing’ (Evening’s Love, 1668). M.Mare and A.C.Percival, discussing an eighteenth-century family in Victorian Best-Seller, remark: ‘Her children stood in wholesome awe of her, and never thought of addressing her otherwise than as Ma’am to the end of her long life.’ This was Charlotte Yonge’s grandmother, wife of a vicar.

   The Daily Chronicle reported in 1901 that ‘the street-car conductors of Boston are compelled to address all their women passengers as “madam”.’ They are unlikely to have used that pronunciation.

   Their modern equivalents, and a great many American men, would use ‘ma’am’, pronounced ‘mam’, to women unknown to them, especially those women likely to be married. This is a particularly American habit, not used in Britain. The custom of addressing one’s mother as ‘ma’am’ has also been retained in the USA amongst certain middle-class families. Whether it reflects ‘wholesome awe’, as in the case of Charlotte Yonge’s grandmother, has a damaging effect on a vital relationship between mother and child, reflects social pretentiousness or is merely an almost unthinking social custom, are matters for psychiatrists and sociologists to think about.

   The special use of ‘Ma’am’ in British court circles is discussed under Marm. There is a comment on the flattering use of ‘ma’am’ in John Steinbeck’s The Wayward Bus, where a bus-driver is trying to get a young woman passenger to show interest in him: ‘Carefully he made his smile a little respectful. “Man says you’re going south on my bus, ma’am,” he said. He almost laughed at that “ma’am”, but it usually worked. It worked with this girl. She smiled a little.’ William, by Irene Hunt, has a young boy address an adolescent girl who has just moved in next door as ‘ma’am’. ‘You don’t have to say “ma’am” to me,’ she tells him. ‘My name’s Sarah.’ He replies: ‘I was raised to say “ma’am” to older ladies.’