How do you pronounce "Mrs."?

MIS uz

The i is like bit. The u is like umbrella.

Officially: ˈmi-səz
(which I would write as miss-ez)

Audio available here. (if you click on the “or of MRS.” link, and then on the audio link by the phonetic spelling.

This goes into a little more than how to pronounce, but I found her explanation somewhat interesting.

As a native British-English speaker, I say “miss-iz”. IPA ˈmɪsɪz

Sounds like the word “misses”.

I pronounce it either as /mɪsɪz/ (so that the vowels are identical and both sound like the “short i” in “hit”) or like /mɪsɨz/ (so that the second vowel is like “e” in “roses” and is slightly more like a schwa).

The standard American pronunciation is supposedly to pronounce the second syllable as a schwa but schwa can be realized in different ways. Sometimes schwa sounds more like the “u” in “cut” but it’s also common to pronounce schwa as /ɪ/ in some words, hence the pronunciation of “McDonalds” as “MickDonalds” (which I don’t happen to say).

\missus\

“misses”

In the south, I’ve heard it pronounced as “miz-rez”.

Miss-is.

I pronounce it the way @Kropotkin does.

It sounds like “misses”.
As in: John always misses the ball when he plays golf with his Mrs.

Isn’t misses and miss-is the same?

Misses and miss-is is the same in Mississippi. ;p

The state was named after its first housewife- Mrs. Ippi. ;)

@rebbel

I pronounce it phonetically- Mirs. ;)

Actually, I pronounce as posted by the previous posters.
I also wonder why the letter r is part of the abbreviation.

I also say it misses. In my youth one of my friend’s mom pronounced it missrez. Fingernails on a chalkboard!

In Mississippi. Lol.

Funny thing some parts of MS pronounce pen and pin the same, and pronounce merry, Mary, and merry all the same.

Mrs. = miss-iz
Miss = miss
Ms. = mizz
Mr. = miss-ter

@Brian1946 I meant to say I think the R is master and mistress, which became mister and missus, but the abbreviations remained Mr. and Mrs.

I feel like they Southerned it up, but I don’t know if it’s the South that actually was responsible for that evolution. It reminds me of the word cuss instead of curse. Probably, totally unrelated.

@Brian1946 According to Grammarist The R came from—The abbreviation Mrs. has been in use since the sixteenth century, it is a variant of the word mistress.

Some more information on Mrs. vs. Miss. becoming more curious I googled this morning.

This talks about the use of Mrs. historically: https://newrepublic.com/amp/article/119432/history-female-titles-mistress-miss-mrs-or-ms

This talks about the pronunciation switching from Mistress to Missis in the 18th century. https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2017/05/missus.html

Honestly, the change from mistress to missus sounds to me another way to bring women down beneath the level of men. Mrs. was previously used for women in power not marital status. It talks about eventually using mistress in lieu of missis/missus is perceived as quaint or pedantic Critical Pronouncing Dictionary of 1791, John Walker writes that “Mrs.” as “a title of civility” should be pronounced “missis,” and that to pronounce the word as “mistress” would “appear quaint and pedantick.” Still reminds me of the South and that using Missus Lastname can be perceived as uppity.

Plus, I think at least some of the time changes in pronunciation or usage happen either from illiteracy or people speaking a second language who are pronouncing similar to their first language or aren’t reading the word or they are using rules from their own culture.