mattock

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English mattok,^[2][3][4] inherited from Old English mattuc, also mattoc, mettoc and meottic,^[5][2] and its further origin is uncertain.^[6][7] Hoad and Weekley call it unknown.^[8][9] The OED, the American Heritage Dictionary, Barnhart and Klein, with varying confidence, propose Vulgar Latin *matteūca (“club”), related to Latin mateola (“a kind of mallet”) and to the source of mace.^{[6][10][11][12]} Etymonline doubts this, and points to Polish motyka, Lithuanian matikas, Old High German medela (“plough”) and Middle High German metz (“knife”) as evidence for a root Proto-Indo-European *mat- behind the Latin, Germanic and Slavic words.^[3] Wiktionary likewise reconstructs Proto-West Germanic *mattjuk, from *met- (“to cut, reap”),^[1] but the OED reports that the Slavic and Baltic connection has been rejected by Bammesberger (1979) and notes that the word has no Germanic cognates.^[6] The SOED treats the ending as -ock on an unknown first element,^[13] while the OED finds that a diminutive suffix fits neither the form nor the meaning, the spellings mathook and motthook being folk etymology.^[6] The Celtic words, Welsh matog, Irish matóg and Scottish Gaelic màdog, are from English.^[6][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

A digging and grubbing tool: mættoc, about 700 in Barnhart,^[11] in the early Old English Épinal Glossary.^[6][5] The glossaries set it against Latin ligō and also against tridens, the three-pronged fork.^[5]

Semantic evolution

Old English texts name the mattuc beside the spade, and beside the axe and adze in a list of tools.^[5] The Middle English word named an agricultural tool for breaking up hard ground, sometimes identified with a pick or a twibill.^[2] From 1539 to 1542 English also had to call a mattock a mattock, on the model of calling a spade a spade.^[6] Johnson (1755) gave two senses, a toothed instrument for pulling up wood (weeds in his 1773 edition) and a pickaxe, quoting Shakespeare.^[14] The verb, usually with up, is recorded from 1649 and can be figurative,^[6] and a British source of 1338 already has a verb mattokare in medieval Latin.^[6]

Timeline

• c. 700 – mættoc, a digging tool.^[11]
• c. 1303 – mattok, in Mannyng's Handlyng Synne.^[11]
• 1539 – to call a mattock a mattock, to speak plainly (last recorded 1542).^[6]
• 1649 – verb, to dig with a mattock.^[6]

Meanings

Noun

1. A digging tool like a pickaxe, with an adze-like blade at one end of the head and a point or chisel edge at the other, used for loosening soil, cutting roots and breaking up hard ground.^[15][4][6]

Verb

1. To dig or grub with a mattock, usually with up or out.^[4][6]

Related words

• mace

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c 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)
3. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b c d Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
10. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
11. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
12. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
13. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
14. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
15. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins