mot

Etymology

It is borrowed from Middle French mot (“word, saying, motto”),^[2][3][4] recorded in Old French from about 1000 in the sense "word, utterance".^[2] The French word is from Late Latin muttum (“an uttered sound, a grunt”),^[2][4][5] which the American Heritage Dictionary and Hoad trace through a Gallo-Romance or Vulgar Latin form *mōttum,^[6][7] and which comes from muttiō (“to mutter, murmur”), of imitative origin,^[2][6][8] the source also of mutter.^[8][7] The OED compares motto, the source of English motto, which Barnhart calls a doublet of this word, and mot, mot, mote and mote.^[2][4] The witty sense was taken again from French in the early 19th century,^[2] and the phrase bon mot, literally "good word", was borrowed whole.^[8][2][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

A motto, especially one on a device: 1575, in Gascoigne's Posies.^[2][3] Barnhart dates the word, as "saying or motto", to 1586,^[4] and Etymonline to the 1580s.^[8]

Semantic evolution

The first English sense, a motto, was obsolete by the middle of the 17th century.^[2][3] From 1591, in Harington's translation of Orlando Furioso, the word also meant simply "a word", and later a comment or opinion; this survives only in the dialects of Lancashire and Cheshire.^[2][9][10] The current sense, a brief witty saying, is recorded from 1813, in Lord Jeffrey's contributions to the Edinburgh Review,^[2][8][4] and Barnhart notes that it was then still treated as a foreign word.^[4] It came in from French, where mot had meant an expressive saying since at least 1585 and bon mot a witticism since about 1227.^[2] For this reason the word kept a French pronunciation without the final t.^[2][10] Other phrases followed from French: mot juste, the exactly right word (1912),^[8][10] and mot d'ordre, a slogan or directive.^[10]

Timeline

• 1575 – a motto (obsolete by 1659).^[2][3]
• 1591 – a word; later a comment or opinion, now only in Lancashire dialect.^[2][9]
• 1735 – the phrase bon mot, a witticism, borrowed from French.^[2][4][8] Merriam-Webster dates the phrase to 1713.^[3]
• 1813 – a brief witty saying.^[2][8][4]
• 1912 – mot juste, the precisely right expression.^[8]

Meanings

Noun

1. A short, clever or witty remark; a bon mot: Her dinner guests repeated her mots for weeks.^{[3][11][2][10]}
2. mot juste: the exactly appropriate word or phrase.^[10][8]
3. (dialect) A word; a comment or opinion, in Lancashire and Cheshire.^[2][9][10]
4. (obsolete, 1575–1659) A motto, as on a device.^[2][3][10]

Related words

• motto
• bon mot
• mutter
• mute

Usage notes

Several unrelated words share the spelling.^[2][3] A mot was the note of a hunting horn from about 1330 to 1867, a specific use of the same French word.^[2] In Irish, especially Dublin, slang a mot is a girl or girlfriend, recorded from 1837 and earlier (1773) a prostitute; the OED takes it as a variant of mort, and Collins agrees that it is perhaps that word.^[2][11][12] In dialect a mot is also the mark aimed at in quoits, from French motte.^[2][3] The British MOT test of motor vehicles is an acronym of Ministry of Transport (1922).^[2][13]

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 r s t u v w x y Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
6. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
7. ^ a b 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 Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
9. ^ 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)
10. ^ a b c d e f g h Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
12. ^ Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
13. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press