missus vs mrs

Side by side

missus or mrs?

What is the difference between missus and mrs?

missus means "informal term of address for someone's wife". mrs means "a form of address for a married woman". They are pronounced identically — /ˈmɪsɪz/ — so only the spelling and the meaning separate them.

Which is more common, missus or mrs?

mrs is the more common of the two — banded "Core" against "Familiar" for missus. Commonness is measured against a large corpus of everyday English, not judged.

Are missus and mrs pronounced the same?

Yes. Both are /ˈmɪsɪz/, said MIS-iz. Words that sound alike and are spelled differently are homophones, and they are the commonest source of written mix-ups in English.

Can missus and mrs be used in the same place in a sentence?

Both work as nouns, so they are grammatically interchangeable. That is exactly what makes the meaning difference worth checking.

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