miss

   The conventionally polite way of addressing a young woman who appears to be unmarried but is of marriageable age. Some speakers would use the term to a younger girl. It is used to an older woman in special situations, e.g. to a waitress in a restaurant as a professional title, by British schoolchildren to a female teacher, where again it is a professional, not a social, title. In the past ‘Miss’ appears to have been used to one’s social superiors, not one’s equals. Thomas Hardy, in Desperate Remedies, has a character of good birth who is obliged to become a lady’s maid. The coachman who collects her says ‘No, m - ’. Hardy explains: ‘The coachman was continually checking himself thus, being about to style her miss involuntarily, and then recollecting that he was only speaking to the new lady’s maid.’

   ‘Miss’ can become the head-word in a vocative group, as in The Vicar of Wakefield, by Oliver Goldsmith, where Mrs Primrose at one point addresses her daughter as ‘my sweetest miss’. In The House with the Green Shutters, by George Douglas, a young man greets two nineteen-year-old girls with ‘Ho, my pretty misses’. In Vanity Fair, by William Thackeray, Mr Osborne in the course of a single speech addresses the heiress Rhoda Swartz as ‘my dear Miss’, ‘my dear Miss Rhoda’, and then ‘Rhoda’: ‘Rhoda, let me say, for my heart warms to you, it does really.’ Osborne is interested in having his daughters become friendly with a young woman of wealth. ‘Miss’ was originally an abbreviation of ‘Mistress’.