Etymology and origin of the Old English word mæst
mæst1 mast of a ship
- Confidence
- Established
- Formation
- Inherited
- First attested
- 900–950 Old English Orosius
- Inherited from
- Proto-West Germanic *mast
- Ultimate origin
- Proto-Germanic *mastaz
Pronunciation
- /mæst/[1]
Forms
mæst m (strong a-stem; genitive singular mæstes, nominative plural mæstas)[1]
Etymology
The word for the ship's mast is inherited from Proto-West Germanic *mast, from Proto-Germanic *mastaz (“pole, mast”).[1][2] It has cognates in Old Saxon mast (“mast, pole”), Dutch mast and Old High German mast (“stick, pole, mast”).[2][3][4]
Kroonen sees a word shared by Germanic and Celtic: it matches the stem of the Middle Irish word for a stick, from Proto-Celtic *mazd-io-.[2] Orel and Holthausen identify the Germanic noun with Latin mālus (“mast”), from a form Proto-Indo-European *mazdo-, and Köbler also starts from that Indo-European form;[5][3]^(Köbler AE|s.v. mæst (1) Kroonen rejects the Latin comparison, which he says needs an awkward earlier form.[5][3][6][2]
Earliest recorded meaning
The mast of a ship is recorded first in the Old English Orosius, whose manuscript was written in the first half or the second quarter of the tenth century.[7][8] The Old English Boethius, in a manuscript of the mid-tenth century, speaks of folding the sail and sometimes lowering the mast.[9][8]
Semantic evolution
The word keeps the one sense throughout the record: the pole that carries the sail.[8][10] Ælfric's Glossary and other glossaries give it for Latin “malus” and “artemo”.[8][6] In the poetry it belongs to the sea voyages: in Beowulf the dead king is laid mærne be mæste “the famous one beside the mast”, and the ship that carries Andreas has one as well.[11][12][13]
It lived on as Middle English mast, now English mast.[14][1]
Timeline
- s. x¹ or x²/⁴ – the mast of a ship in the Old English Orosius (Tollemache).[7][8]
- s. x med. – lowering the mast in the Old English Boethius (Cotton Otho A. vi).[9][8]
- s. x² – the ship's mast in Andreas in the Vercelli Book.[15][13]
- s. x/xi – mærne be mæste “the famous one beside the mast” in the Beowulf manuscript.[16][11][12]
- c. 1275 (?a. 1200) – Middle English Heo rærden heora mastes “they raised their masts” in Laȝamon's Brut.[14]
Meanings
Noun
Descendants
mæst2 mast, nuts as pig fodder
- Confidence
- Probable
- Formation
- Inherited
- First attested
- charter S 1437 of 825, in a later copy
- Inherited from
- Proto-Germanic *mastaz
- Ultimate origin
- Proto-Germanic *mastaz
Pronunciation
- /mæst/[1]
Forms
mæst m (strong a-stem; genitive singular mæstes, nominative plural mæstas)[1]
Etymology
The word for the mast of forest trees is inherited from Proto-Germanic *mastaz (“mast, fruit of forest trees”).[1][2] Its cognate is Old High German mast (“fattening, fodder”); the verb German mästen (“to fatten”) is made from the same noun.[2][17]
Kroonen thinks it likely that Old Irish mess (“mast”) belongs here, since acorns and beechnuts were fed to pigs in both cultures.[2] Further back the word may be related to the Indo-European words for fat: Orel compares Ancient Greek μαστός (mastós, “breast”), and Köbler and Wiktionary derive it from Proto-Indo-European *maddo-, of the root of Latin madeō (“to be wet”).[5][6][1]
Earliest recorded meaning
The earliest record is a document of 825 settling a dispute about swine-pasture at Sinton in Leigh, Worcestershire: þrim hunde swina mæst, ond se biscop and ða higen ahten twæde ðæs wuda ond ðæs mæstes “mast for three hundred swine, and the bishop and the community were to have two parts of the wood and of the mast”.[8][18] Wormald holds the text not to be contemporary in its present form.[18]
Semantic evolution
The word names the fruit of forest trees, acorns and beechnuts, as food for swine, and it appears mostly in charters, where the right to feed pigs in a wood was valuable; a Latin charter renders it “porcorum esca”, food of pigs.[8][19] The metrical psalms use it for the fruit of great trees.[8] Formed from it are the noun mæsten “mast-pasture” and the verb mæstan “to fatten”.[8]
It lived on as Middle English mast “acorns, beechnuts, food for swine”, recorded from the late fourteenth century.[14]
Timeline
- 825 (grant; later copy) – þrim hunde swina mæst “mast for three hundred swine” in a settlement surviving in a later form.[8][18]
- 1396 – Middle English mast, the fruit of trees as pig fodder, in a record of an inquisition.[14]
Meanings
Noun
Word family
- mæsten
- mæstan
Usage notes
Most spellings mæst in the texts are not these nouns but mǣst “most”, the superlative of miċel, also used as an adverb “mostly, chiefly”.[8][20][10]
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
- ^ a b c d e f g Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 357
- ^ a b c Holthausen, Ferdinand (1934), Altenglisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, p. 212
- ^ Lloyd, Albert L.; Springer, Otto; Lühr, Rosemarie, et al. (1988–), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; online ewa.saw-leipzig.de
- ^ a b c Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 263
- ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Altenglisches Wörterbuch, 4th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling, p. s.v. mæst
- ^ a b Gneuss, Helmut; Lapidge, Michael (2014), Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A Bibliographical Handlist of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, p. 249
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement, p. 662
- ^ a b Gneuss, Helmut; Lapidge, Michael (2014), Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A Bibliographical Handlist of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, p. 296
- ^ a b c d Sweet, Henry (1896), The Student's Dictionary of Anglo-Saxon, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 134
- ^ a b c Fulk, R. D.; Bjork, Robert E.; Niles, John D., eds. (2008), Klaeber's Beowulf and The Fight at Finnsburg, 4th ed., Toronto: University of Toronto Press (glossary), p. s.v. mæst
- ^ a b Healey, Antonette diPaolo; Price Wilkin, John; Xiang, Xin, eds. (2009), Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus, Toronto: Dictionary of Old English Project
- ^ a b North, Richard; Bintley, Michael D. J., eds. (2016), Andreas: An Edition, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press (glossary), p. s.v. mæst
- ^ a b c d Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
- ^ Gneuss, Helmut; Lapidge, Michael (2014), Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A Bibliographical Handlist of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, p. 704
- ^ Gneuss, Helmut; Lapidge, Michael (2014), Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A Bibliographical Handlist of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, p. 344
- ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 6th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling, p. s.v. mast
- ^ a b c The Electronic Sawyer: Online Catalogue of Anglo-Saxon Charters, revised ed. by S. E. Kelly and R. Rushforth, King's College London / University of Cambridge, esawyer.lib.cam.ac.uk, p. S 1437
- ^ LangScape: The Language of Landscape: Reading the Anglo-Saxon Countryside, King's College London, langscape.org.uk
- ^ Fulk, R. D.; Bjork, Robert E.; Niles, John D., eds. (2008), Klaeber's Beowulf and The Fight at Finnsburg, 4th ed., Toronto: University of Toronto Press (glossary), p. s.v. mǣst
Related etymologies
Cite this entry
“Mæst.” Etymologically, 16 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/ang/m%C3%A6st. Accessed 16 Nov. 2026.
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