maul

Etymology

The noun is inherited from Middle English malle, earlier mealle,^[2][3][4] borrowed from Old French mail (“hammer”),^{[3][4][5][6][7]} from Latin malleus (“hammer”).^[3][8][4][9] The modern spelling maul is a 16th-century alteration of malle.^[2] The Anglo-Norman word is recorded from the early 12th century for a heavy hammer.^[10] The OED notes that the early forms are hard to explain, and that some scholars take them as partly from an unrecorded Old English borrowing of the Latin word.^[8] The word is first found in a surname, Gilbertus Maulmanger, in 1205, from an otherwise unrecorded compound meaning a seller of mauls.^[8][2] The verb, Middle English mallen, is from the noun,^[8][2][3] compare maillier.^[8][5] Etymonline traces malleus to Proto-Indo-European *mele- (“to crush, grind”),^[3] and Merriam-Webster Unabridged takes it as akin to molō (“to grind”).^[5] The same Latin word gave mallet, mall and mell.^[8][7][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

A heavy hammer, and the verb "to strike with a heavy weapon": both are first recorded in Sawles Warde (c. 1225), whose Bodleian manuscript has the plural mealles.^[8] Etymonline dates the noun to about 1200 and the verb to the mid-13th century;^[3] Barnhart has the noun probably about 1200.^[2]

Semantic evolution

In Middle English the noun meant a heavy hammer or a mace used as a weapon (c. 1325), and the verb to strike or knock someone down with such a weapon.^[8][7] The verb lost its link with hammering:^[3] the sense "to beat and bruise, knock about" appears in Middleton (before 1627), Barnhart dating "to handle roughly" to about 1610,^[8][2] "to damage seriously, mangle" in 1694,^[8][3] and "to handle roughly or carelessly", first a regional use of southern and midland England, in 1746.^[8] The figurative "to criticize harshly" is recorded from 1592, in Nashe,^[8] and "to spoil or garble through incompetence" from 1782, in Cowper.^[8] Of an animal tearing at its prey, the verb is first found in Bulwer-Lytton (1848).^[8] In American English the hammer was used with wedges to split fence rails, and the verb is recorded in that sense from 1664 in Maryland.^[8][3] In rugby a maul was first a tackle or a struggle for the ball (1860), now a loose scrum around a standing player who holds the ball.^[8][11] In 19th-century American campus slang the verb meant to pet passionately.^[12] Johnson (1755) defined the verb as "to beat; to bruise; to hurt in coarse or butcherly manner".^[13]

Timeline

• c. 1225 – a heavy hammer; verb, to strike with a heavy weapon (obsolete by 1675).^[8]
• c. 1325 – a heavy mace or club used as a weapon.^[8]
• 1481 – a heavy blow (obsolete).^[8]
• 1592 – verb, to criticize harshly.^[8]
• before 1627 – to beat and bruise, to knock about.^[8]
• 1664 – to split fence rails with a maul and wedge, in the American South.^[8]
• 1694 – to damage seriously, to mangle.^[8][3]
• 1746 – to handle roughly or carelessly.^[8]
• 1782 – to spoil or garble.^[8]
• 1848 – of an animal, to tear with claws or teeth.^[8]
• 1860 – in rugby, a struggle for the ball.^[8]

Meanings

Noun

1. A heavy, long-handled hammer used to drive stakes, piles or wedges; a sledgehammer or beetle.^{[4][5][11][8]}
2. A heavy hammer with a wedge-shaped head, used for splitting logs.^[4][5]
3. (historical) A heavy club or mace used as a weapon.^[5][8][6]
4. (rugby) A loose scrum formed around a player who is on his feet and holding the ball.^[11][8]

Verb

1. To injure by beating; to batter or mangle: The bear mauled the hiker before running off.^{[4][5][11][8]}
2. To handle roughly or clumsily; to paw: Stop mauling the cat.^[4][11][8]
3. To criticize harshly: The critics mauled her second novel.^[8][6]
4. To split wood with a maul and wedge.^[4][8]
5. (obsolete) To strike or knock down with a heavy weapon.^[5][8]

Word family

• mauler
• unmauled
• bemaul

Related words

• mall
• mallet
• mell
• malleus
• pall-mall

Usage notes

Two dialect words share the spelling.^[8][14] One, maul or mauls for the common mallow, is a variant of mallow, recorded from before 1425,^[8] and the English Dialect Dictionary finds it in Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire.^[14] The other, "to toil, to drag oneself along wearily", recorded from 1821 in John Clare, is probably a variant of moil;^[8][14] the Shorter Oxford likewise treats this sense as perhaps a different word.^[6]

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f g h The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
5. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
10. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
11. ^ a b c d e Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
12. ^ Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
13. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
14. ^ a b c Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)