Mesdemoiselles

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ˌmeɪdəmwəˈzɛl(z)/

Definitions

1. A term used in French to refer to young unmarried women
2. often employed as a polite or formal address for girls or young women in social settings
3. used to denote the plural form of the title for a lady or miss in contemporary usage

Etymology: "Mesdemoiselles" is the plural of "mademoiselle", the French form of address for an unmarried woman or girl, and English took the plural over unchanged from French. Its parts are French: "mes", the plural of "mon" ("my"), and "demoiselle", a word that originally meant a young noun of noble birth, a sense now largely lost in the modern language. The French plural keeps its own spelling and pronunciation, which is why the word sounds unmistakably foreign to most English speakers. Because the word is a direct borrowing rather than an English coinage, its history lies in French usage. In English it appears mainly in formal or deliberately old-fashioned contexts, such as invitations, correspondence, and the address of a group of young women at a formal occasion. Its spelling and sound have changed little from the French, which is itself a sign of how much English relies on borrowed forms for polite social address.