mantel

Etymology

It is originally a variant spelling of mantle, now kept apart in form for the senses to do with a fireplace.^[2][3][4][5] It is inherited from Middle English mantel, borrowed from Middle French mantel, also manteau, meaning cloak, mantle and mantel,^[6][7] and the OED compares the Anglo-Norman mantle, recorded in the fireplace sense from 1370 or earlier, the Middle French word (1332 in that sense), and Medieval Latin mantellum, used in that sense in British sources from the 13th century.^[2] The cloak word goes back to Latin mantellum (“cloak”).^[8][2]

Earliest recorded meaning

A piece of timber or stone supporting the masonry above a fireplace: 1357, in building records quoted in Salzman's Building in England.^[2] Barnhart's first record is 1489, for a movable shelter used by soldiers besieging a fortress, with the fireplace sense from 1519.^[9][10]

Semantic evolution

The fireplace sense is probably a transferred use of the cloak word, a mantle covering the chimney: Skeat notes that in old fireplaces the mantel projected like a hood to catch the smoke,^[11] and Johnson (1755) explained it as work raised before a chimney to conceal it, whence the name, which originally signifies a cloak.^[12] Weekley compares French manteau de cheminée.^[5] It is often a shortening of mantiltre, manteltree (1451–52), the beam over the fireplace, with tree in the old sense "beam".^[9][13][2] The word was used for the whole ornamental structure around a fireplace in the 16th century (1532), and for the shelf on top of it in the 18th (1742);^[2][3] mantelpiece is recorded from 1660, in Pepys's diary.^[2] The military sense, a movable shelter for besiegers, was used from the late 15th to the mid 16th century.^[3][9][7] In rock climbing a mantel is a move for getting up onto a narrow ledge, recorded with the verb from 1987.^[2]

Timeline

• 1357 – a timber or stone beam supporting the masonry above a fireplace (obsolete by 1824).^[2]
• 1489 – a movable shelter for soldiers besieging a fortress (obsolete).^[9][3]
• 1532 – an ornamental structure of wood or marble above and around a fireplace.^[2]
• 1742 – the shelf above a fireplace.^[2][3]
• 1824 – mantel clock, a clock made to stand on the mantelshelf.^[13]
• 1987 – in climbing, a move onto a narrow ledge; also as a verb.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. The shelf above a fireplace; a mantelpiece: She kept the photographs on the mantel.^[14][6][2]
2. The frame of wood or stone around a fireplace opening, with its decorative facing.^[14][6][2]
3. The beam, stone or arch serving as a lintel to support the masonry above a fireplace; a manteltree.^[6][2]
4. (mountaineering) A move for climbing onto a narrow, flat ledge of rock.^[2]

Verb

1. (mountaineering) To climb onto a ledge in this way.^[2]

Word family

• mantelboard
• manteltree

Related words

• mantelpiece
• mantle
• mantelet
• mantilla
• mantua

Usage notes

Collins records mantle as a less common spelling of the fireplace word,^[14] and Weekley compares the split between metal and mettle, two spellings of one word that came to be used for different senses.^[5]

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
5. ^ a b c Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
6. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
9. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
10. ^ Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
11. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
12. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
13. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
14. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins