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Comment by throwawaymath | Hacker News Reader

Here's an offtopic observation. This article (from the New York Times) denoted the names of the Instagram founders as "Mr. Systrom and Mr. Krieger..."

The Wall Street Journal has a corresponding article about this story. In that article, the Instagram founders' names are written, "Messrs. Systrom and Krieger..."

Despite frequently reading both papers, I can't recall ever seeing "Messrs" before. I thought it was a typo at first; turns out it's a formal way to refer to two or more men instead of saying Mr. several times. This isn't germane to the story at hand at all, but I found it to be an interesting and educational part of reading both articles about the same story.

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Specifically, it's an abbreviation of the French messieurs, which is just multiple misters. Maybe it's more formal now, but it was ordinary and frequently used in the past in both French and English writing. (Obviously, still quite commonly used in, um, French today.)

E.g., English https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=messrs&case_in...

French https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=messrs&case_in...

In particular, compare: “mon sieur” vs. “mes sieurs”.

Indeed

As a French, it feels weird to learn something about my language on an English site :|. I don't remember seeing it written in French. Or I saw it, understood the meaning and forgot.

You’ve probably heard it without noticing - eg “Mesdames et messieurs” (ladies and gentlemen) is still in common use.

That's because it's largely unused nowadays, the current abbreviation being MM. (which doubles the M. – not Mr! – abbreviation for monsieur).

English words of French origin are normally considered formal. Back when the French invaded England the rich spoke French, while the poor spoke Anglo Saxon. The words mutated and changed but words of French origin are now formal because of this.

My only knowledge of Messrs comes from "Messrs Moony Wormtail Padfoot and Prongs" :)

"Messrs" is pretty old fashioned language. It's uncommon to see it in modern use.

> "Messrs" is pretty old fashioned language. It's uncommon to see it in modern use.

Though it may be part of the WSJ's house style, so you might see it in its pages quote a bit (the paywall means I don't read it enough to know). For a similar example, see the New Yorker's continued archaic use of the diaeresis:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaeresis_(diacritic)#English

I know I'm reading a New Yorker quote when I see the superfluous diaeresis in coördination or a similar word. Some words, such as Noël, have a legitimate reason due to counterintuitive pronunciation or as a sign of its archaicness.

In any other context, I mostly think of Spinal Tap.

Maybe in the US. It's not uncommon in the UK.

"Messrs." is fairly common in British English, although it would be considered quite formal by most people.

is it? I have never, ever seen it used and I've lived in the UK my whole life.

You'll find it a lot in older literature, Dickens etc.

Still see it used sometimes in current UK English, most often by solicitors or in other formal language.

Definitely becoming less common and fading out, like Esq and Esquire slowly died out of standard usage on bank statements and other official letters, over the last 20 years.

Growing up I always understood that the Messrs. language was standard for WSJ.

Now that I've slept on it I may have been thinking of the Economist.

Just learned something new today!

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