A lady is a woman who behaves in a polite way. Once used to describe only women of a high social class or status, the female counterpart of lord, now it may refer to any adult woman, as gentleman can be used for men.
"Lady" is also a formal title in the United Kingdom. "Lady" is used before the family name or peerage of a woman with a title of nobility or honorary title suo jure (in her own right), such as female members of the Order of the Garter and Order of the Thistle, or the wife of a lord, a baronet, Scottish feudal baron, laird, or a knight, and also before the first name of the daughter of a duke, marquess, or earl.
Etymology
The word comes from Old English '; the first part of the word is a mutated form of ', "loaf, bread", also seen in the corresponding ', "lord". The second part is usually taken to be from the root dig-, "to knead", seen also in dough; the sense development from bread-kneader, or bread-maker, or bread-shaper, to the ordinary meaning, though not clearly to be traced historically, may be illustrated by that of "lord".
Usage
thumb|right|300px|[[John William Waterhouse's The Lady of Shalott, 1888 (Tate Gallery, London, England)]]
The primary meaning of "mistress of a household" is now mostly obsolete, which is also the case for "gentleman". Use as a singular noun of address was once common but has become mostly confined to poetry. In this usage, the word "lady" is very seldom capitalized when written. The usual English term for politely addressing a woman is madam or its abbreviation ma'am.
In English, relatively few job titles are un-gendered. Some names for jobs are gender-neutral, e.g. mail carrier (postal worker), but where there is a common word with a -man suffix, sometimes -lady may be used as an equivalent, e.g. postman and (sometimes) postlady. Using "lady" in professional job titles which had previously been male preserves fell out of favour with second-wave feminism (lady doctor, lady engineer, lady judge), though lady doctor is sometimes used by a healthcare receptionist when booking an appointment at a group practice health centre so that the situation is clear to the patient. It is still used in some other occupations, to give dignity and express respect to less skilled work such as tea ladies in offices and hospitals, lunch ladies (or dinner ladies) in school canteens, cleaning ladies in private homes and in business premises, and healthcare ladies for female healthcare assistants.
Both British and American commentators noted the shifting uses of "lady" in the mid-twentieth century. The American journalist William Allen White noted one of the difficulties in his 1946 autobiography. He relates that a woman who had paid a fine for prostitution came to his newspaper to protest, not against the fact that her conviction had been reported, but that the newspaper had referred to her as a "woman" rather than a "lady". After the incident, White assured his readers, his papers referred to human females as "women", with the exception of police court characters, who were all "ladies". The British historian Nancy Mitford wrote an influential essay in 1954, "U vs. non-U", in which she noted the class distinctions: lower class women strongly preferred to be called "ladies", while those from higher social backgrounds were content to be identified as "women". Commenting on the word in 1953, C. S. Lewis wrote that "the guard at Holloway said it was a ladies prison!" The term "a bag lady" (vagabond) is a euphemism for a woman who has fallen on hard times; a "lady of the night" is a polite term for a prostitute.
In British English, "lady" is often, but not always, simply a courteous synonym for "woman". Public toilets are often distinguished by signs showing simply "Ladies" or "Gentlemen". "Lady" can have a formal and respectful quality, being used to describe an elderly woman as "an old lady" or when speaking about a woman to a child (e.g. "Give the money to the lady.") It remains in use as a counterpart to "gentleman", in the plural phrase "ladies and gentlemen", and is generally interchangeable (in a strictly informal sense) with "woman" (as in, "The lady at the store said I could return this item within thirty days"). However, some women, since the rise of second-wave feminism, have objected to the term used in contexts such as the last example, arguing that the term sounds patronising and outdated when used in this way; a man in the same context would not necessarily be referred to as a "gentleman". One feminist proponent of language reform, Robin Lakoff, in her book Language and Woman's Place (1975), notably raised the issue of the ways in which "lady" is not used as the counterpart of "gentleman". It is suggested by academic Elizabeth Reid Boyd that feminist usage of the word "lady" has been reclaimed in the 21st century.
British titles
Formally, "Lady" is the female counterpart to higher ranks in society, from gentlemen, through knights, to peers of the realm. During the Middle Ages, princesses or daughters of the blood royal were usually known by their first names with "Lady" prefixed, e.g. The Lady Elizabeth; In the case of younger sons of a duke or marquess, who have the courtesy title "Lord" prefixed to their given and family name, the wife may use "Lady" prefixed to the husband's given and family names, e.g. Lady John Smith. Widows and former wives of knights retain their married style until their death or they remarry. She is also never addressed as "Lady Jane Smith".
Female members of the Order of the Garter and Order of the Thistle who do not hold a higher style also receive the prefix of "Lady"; here that title is prefixed to the given and family name of the lady, e.g. Lady Marion Fraser, LT, with the post nominal LG or LT, respectively, and this is preserved if the lady marries.
Other meanings
The special use of the word as a title of the Virgin Mary, usually Our Lady, represents the Latin Domina Nostra. In Lady Day and Lady Chapel, the word is properly a genitive, representing hlǣfdigan