Mrs
/ˈmɪsɪz/
"mrs" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“Mrs” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #1,372 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #1,372
- frequency rank, English
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Abbreviation of Missus or Mistress; used before an adult woman's name or surname, used for any high-status woman without regard to marital status until the 1800s, after which it began to be reserve...
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | Mrs |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈmɪsɪz/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #1,372 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “Mrs” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for Mrs is 3 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈmɪsɪz/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,372 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Abbreviation of Missus or Mistress; used before an adult woman's name or surname, used for any high-status woman without regard to marital status until the 1800s, after which it began to be reserve...".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for Mrs, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "my", "MS", "MT", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From mistress. The correct English form is Mrs, spelled M-R-S.
Definition
- 1Abbreviation of Missus or Mistress; used before an adult woman's name or surname, used for any high-status woman without regard to marital status until the 1800s, after which it began to be reserved for married, divorced and widowed women and used with their married surnames.
Etymology
From mistress.
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “Mrs”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is M-R-S - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ˈmɪsɪz/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “my” - see the side-by-side comparison. Mrs vs my
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.