28 Sep
2010
In Germany, the word for woman is the same - Frau refers to the female sex, her title, honorific and her marital status.
This is quite different in English: just like the word Fraulein, the word Miss, is no longer popular or used in normal writing. Although we still refer to married women with Mrs. + her/husband's last name, whenever she is single, divorced or her marital status is completely irrelevant to our correspondence then we usually use the honorific Ms.
A married woman is a wife.
A woman who was a part of high-society was a lady in old English however today any adult woman with good manners displays lady-like behaviour and the woman who owns the house you are renting is your landlady.
In impolite conversations, if you hear the phrase "she's his woman" then the speaker is suggesting that the man has a wife at home but this other woman is the lover he has on the side. "She's one of his women" tells you, however, that the man enjoys serial relationships or is dating more than one woman.
If you're male reading this do be very careful about referring to your wife as your woman - eyebrows will raise and it may make you seem like a macho being very disrespectful to his loved one.
Women generally refer to their group of female friends as their girlfriends but usually avoid referring to one of these in particular in case she gives the false impression that she's gay. She may say instead "She's one of my best (girl)friends."
Men avoid this situation all together and refer to all of their friends without attaching a sex-label as mates, homeboys, friends.
If an older woman is in a relationship with a much younger man then she may jokingly refer to him with friends as her boyfriend however generally when she's dating someone her own age or older she tends to avoid adding a label to his status in her life and may simply introduce the person she's with as "This is my Bill."
Sometimes older dating couples will refer to each other as partners and this is also the term most commonly used by same-sex couples.
On that note, married women in same-sex relationships quite often refer to each other in conversation as each other's wives, yet married men in same-sex relationships usually don't refer to each other as each other's husbands... probably due to the implied insult of being the female in the relationship!
