Relative Frequency as a Determinant of Phonetic Change

Miss or Mrs., and it therefore needs no powerful accent of its own. But there are hundreds of possibilities for confusion of the proper name. Hence, if one part should be made more conspicuous by accent, it must logically be this, the proper name. We may say that, as soon as master became a frequently used title of address, it was so normal in discourse that it lost its strong accent, so as to cause a weakening in form.