missy

   A diminutive of ‘Miss’ which has the effect of converting that word into a true vocative. ‘You keep your mouth out of this, missy,’ says an aunt to her young, but nevertheless married, niece in Truman Capote’s short story My Side of the Matter. In The Sandcastle, by Iris Murdoch, an elderly man who is having his portrait painted by a much younger woman says: ‘It’s time you stopped that now, missie.’ ‘Missy’ is used in a friendly way to a teenage girl in Girl with Green Eyes, by Edna O’Brien. The term is also much used by the father of Scarlett O’Hara, in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind, to address his daughter. He equates it with ‘Puss’, ‘Daughter’, and the like. War Brides, by Lois Battle, has an Australian mother saying to her daughter: ‘All right, missy, five minutes.’