ms
- 1A title used before an adult woman's name or surname, especially when indicating her marital status with Miss or Mrs. is not wanted or not possible.
Not knowing whether the client was married, he began the email with "Dear Ms. Okafor."
The award went to Ms. Ana Rivera, the company's chief financial officer.
UsagePronounced miz; used before a surname or full name (Ms. Chen), while ma'am addresses a woman whose name you don't use.
Note
An older title than it looks: it has been found since the 1600s as a short form of mistress, the same title that gave English Miss and Mrs. Mistress did not at first say whether a woman was married, so this form carries that early neutrality forward.
- 2Symbol for millisecond, an SI unit of time equal to one thousandth of a second.
The page loaded in 250 ms on a fast connection.
Set the delay between the two tones to 500 ms.
UsageWritten after a number with a space (250 ms), with no plural s; a capital Ms means megasecond.
- 3Sayem-ES/ˌɛm ˈɛs/Initialism of multiple sclerosis.
She has lived with MS for twenty years and still teaches full-time.
Researchers are testing drugs that may slow the progress of MS.
UsageUsed with no article: people have MS, are diagnosed with MS or live with MS.
- 4Sayem-ES/ˌɛm ˈɛs/Initialism of Master of Science.
Applicants must hold an MS or a higher degree in engineering.
After finishing his MS in statistics, he joined a public health agency.
UsageSaid em-ess, so an MS (not
incorrect: a MS); the subject follows in: an MS in statistics.Note
It ranks above a Bachelor of Science and below a doctorate, with its weight on science and its practical applications. Study for it usually lasts two or three years beyond the bachelor's degree. The letters name the degree itself, so people study for, hold or finish an MS, often naming the field: an MS in biology.
- 5Initialism of Microsoft, the American multinational technology company founded in 1975.
The course teaches spreadsheets in MS Excel and slide decks in MS PowerPoint.
The IT team moved every employee's email over to MS Outlook last spring.
UsageMostly right before a product name: MS Word, MS Excel, MS Outlook.
- 6Abbreviation of Mississippi, a state of the United States.
Ship the order to 120 Main Street, Hattiesburg, MS.
Her return address read Starkville, MS, so I knew she had moved.
UsageTwo capitals, no periods, after the city in addresses (Biloxi, MS); in running text, write Mississippi.
- 7Sayem-ES/ˌɛm ˈɛs/Abbreviation of manuscript.
Please submit the revised ms, double-spaced, by Friday.
The scholar compared the printed edition with the original ms and found several changes.
UsagePlural mss, made by doubling the letter: three mss of one poem.
Note
The abbreviation covers both meanings of the full word: a document written by hand, and the copy an author submits to a publisher for editing.
- 8Short for mass spectrometry, a laboratory method used to identify substances by measuring the mass-to-charge ratios of their ions.
Researchers confirmed the compound's identity by MS after separating it with liquid chromatography.
Proteins in the blood samples were identified using MS.
UsageWritten in capitals, often joined to a separation step (LC-MS, GC-MS); lowercase ms means milliseconds.
- 9Sayem-ES/ˌɛm ˈɛs/Initialism of motor ship, also written M/S.
Rescue crews reached the MS Aurora within an hour of its distress call.
Passengers aboard the MS Coral Bay spent two days at sea before reaching the islands.
UsagePlaced before a ship's name, usually after the: the MS Aurora.
Note
Set before a vessel's name, these letters tell how the ship is driven, by an internal-combustion engine rather than by steam, which the older prefix SS announced. M/S is the same prefix written with a slash, and both belong to shipping, unlike the medical and academic meanings that share the same capitals.
Less common meanings
- 10Sayem-ES/ˌɛm ˈɛs/Initialism of middle school.
She taught seventh-grade science at Jefferson MS before moving to a job in the district office.
Tryouts for the MS soccer team begin Monday after school.
UsageOften before another noun as a label, as in the MS band or the MS principal.
- 11Sayem-ES/ˌɛm ˈɛs/Initialism of member of Senedd.
The MS held a surgery at the town library on Saturday morning.
Several MSs from different parties signed the open letter.
UsagePlural MSs; used much like MP, as in our local MS.
Note
Welsh politics uses these letters for a member of the Senedd, the Welsh Parliament, much as it uses MP for a member of Parliament. Like MP, the letters work as an ordinary noun for the person: people write to their MS, and an MS may hold a surgery at the town library.
- 12Plural of m: the letter m or M, more than one of it.
- 13Initialism of murder-suicide.
- 14Initialism of morphine sulfate.
- 15Initialism of Morgan Stanley, used as the stock ticker symbol for its shares.
- 16Initialism of mint state, a grading term in coin collecting.
- 17Initialism of mitral stenosis.
- 18Initialism of medium shot.
- 19Abbreviation of Mato Grosso do Sul, a state of Brazil.
- 20Initialism of mini-sheet.
- 21Abbreviation of mesyl.
- 22Symbol for megasecond, an SI unit of time equal to one million seconds.
- 23Symbol for megasiemens, an SI unit of electrical conductance equal to one million siemens.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origins
Since the 1600s it has served as an abbreviation of mistress, the word that also gave Miss and Mrs; at first the title said nothing about whether a woman was married. People began urging its revival in 1901, pointing out that dialects such as Southern US English already pronounced Miss and Mrs alike (/ˈmɪz/). Once Ms. magazine was founded in 1971, the title spread quickly as an alternative to Miss and Mrs., both of which require knowing and revealing a woman's marital status.
Formed from m, the symbol for the prefix milli- (one thousandth), and s, the symbol for the second.
Checked 6 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- ms is formed by combining m for milli- and s for second. en.wiktionary.org
- m is the symbol for milli-, meaning one thousandth. nist.gov
- s is the symbol for the second. bipm.org