singleton

The word is older than the diary it is known from. Dictionary.com (opens in a new window) records it from 1875 to 1880 and lists, after a child born alone and an only child, a British sense: “an unmarried person; a single.” Asked which of the coinages in Bridget Jones’s Diary she liked best, Helen Fielding answered (opens in a new window) that she was “very pleased about the word ‘singleton,’ which of course wasn’t my word. A friend made it up for a party: ‘singleton’s in one hotel, marrieds in another!’” “Spinster,” she said, “is horrible,” and “‘Singleton’s’ a good word, and it applies to both men and women.” The dictionary had it more than a century before the party.

The party is the market. At the party the word sorted guests, and it kept that function: a singleton is defined by the hotel the host puts them in, across the road from the other one. The other hotel is larger. In 2020 the Office for National Statistics (opens in a new window) found that “the majority (61.3%) of the population aged 16 years and over in England and Wales were living in a couple.”

Under load, the improved word does the job of the old one at a better rate. It is said cheerfully, usually first, and usually to a married person, who would otherwise have had to ask. The speaker gets to file the status before anyone else can, under a heading of the speaker’s choosing. The heading is still a status, and the question it answers is still the one asked at every wedding.