In July composer Judith Weir was named as the first woman to hold the post of Master of the Queen’s Music, following in the footsteps of dozens of eminent male musicians with the same title. The Guardian reported that “the palace never even suggested ‘mistress’ of the Queen’s music and neither did she.”

When the role Master of the King’s Music was created in 1626, the words master and mistress were direct equivalents. Today mistress carries multiple connotations, one of which the Daily Mail alluded to in a headline before the announcement asking if Weir might be the Queen’s first Music Mistress.

Research by Cambridge University historian Dr. Amy Erickson, published in the autumn issue of History Workshop Journal, unravels the complex history of an extraordinarily slippery word and suggests that the title of Mrs, pronounced “mistress,” was for centuries applied to all adult women of higher social status, whether married or not.

Erickson’s inquiries into forms of female address emerged from her study of women’s employment before the advent of the national census in 1801. What she found in registers, records, and archives led her to question existing assumptions and track the changes that have taken place in the history of titles.

She says: “Few people realize that ‘Mistress’ is the root word of both of the abbreviations ‘Mrs,’ and ‘Miss,’ just as Mr is an abbreviation of ‘Master.’ The ways that words derived from Mistress have developed their own meanings is quite fascinating and shifts in these meanings can tell us a lot about the changing status of women in society, at home and in the workplace.”