Those of us who started life on this planet in the 1960s may think that the popularizing of Ms. as an abbreviation—partly due to Gloria Steinem's magazine—in the late sixties/early seventies was very close to the first appearance of that title, but Ben Zimmer has uncovered a piece published on this date in 1901 that shows otherwise. That's an eye-opener for me; by the time I was born, "Ms." was sixty years old!
Just another example of great research by Zimmer, whose excellent work on Winston Churchill appears in our very own Far from the Madding Gerund.
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