ms
noun
Simple meaning
Title used before an adult woman's name or surname.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
mizIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈmɪz
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
Title used before an adult woman's name or surname, especially when it is not desired or possible to indicate her marital status with Miss or Mrs.
plural MSS
A book, composition or any other document, written by hand (or manually typewritten), not mechanically reproduced.
Microsoft Corporation.
A school which crosses the traditional divide between primary school and secondary school.
A state of the Center-West Region, Brazil. Capital: Campo Grande.
A state of the United States.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A1 · Beginner (estimated)
- Frequency
- Very Common
- Typical Use
- Varies by meaning
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Title used before an adult woman's name or surname, especially when it is not desired or possible to indicate her marital status with Miss or Mrs.
Used this way, ms is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in relationships contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Relationships
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Other combinations
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.