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Etymology and origin of the English word mote

Pronunciation

mote1 speck, particle

Confidence
Established
Formation
Inherited
First attested
Cleopatra Glossary
Inherited from
Old English mot via Middle English

Etymology

The word for a speck is inherited from Middle English mot, also mote,[2][3] inherited from Old English mot (“a mote, an atom”).[4][5][6][7][8] Hoad explains that the modern form, Middle English moot in the 14th century, comes from the Old English oblique case forms, while mott, from the uninflected form, lasted until the 18th century.[8] Its cognates are West Frisian mot (“peat dust”), the second part of Middle Dutch turfmot (“peat dust”) and steenmot (“grit”), Dutch mot (“dust from straw, sawdust, grit”), Low German mut (“peat dust, grit, rubbish”) and regional Norwegian mutt (“short piece of straw, flake, grain”);[4][9][10] the OED also compares Swedish smutt (“little bit”), with an s- prefix.[4] Its further origin is unknown.[6][3][8][9] The OED suggests that it may be the same as the Dutch word for drizzle in motregen (“drizzle”), though the change of sense is hard to explain, or that it may be related to the Germanic base of moth, with an original sense "to gnaw, reduce to small fragments";[4] Weekley thought it perhaps cognate with smut.[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

A particle of dust: the first record is in the Cleopatra Glossary, from the early Old English period;[4] Barnhart dates the Old English word to about 1000, and the Middle English forms mote, mot to about 1300, in Arthour and Merlin.[3] In the Old English Gospels it translates the Latin festuca of Matthew 7:3, the speck in a brother's eye.[5][11]

Semantic evolution

Most of the word's literary uses look back to the parable of the mote and the beam in Matthew 7:3,[6][11] and since Middle English a mote in the eye has been a small fault that one notices in another person while ignoring one's own.[2][9] By about 1300 a mote could also be a speck of dirt in food or drink, a sense now Scottish,[4][2] and by about 1390 anything very small, a trifle or a jot.[4][2] The Middle English Dictionary records the phrase motes in the sonne for the dust seen in sunlight.[2] Chaucer used the word twice.[12] A mote was also a spot or blemish, and figuratively a fault, from about 1400.[4] In the 16th century it came to mean a straw or a stalk of hay, now a regional use in the south-west of England and in Irish English,[4][13] and in the 19th century the cotton trade used it for a seed fragment or other impurity in the fibre.[4][13] The English Dialect Dictionary records it for a particle, a tiny quantity, or figuratively a very small creature, from Scotland and Ireland to Yorkshire, Wiltshire, Devon and Cornwall.[14]

Timeline

  • early Old English – a particle of dust.[4]
  • c. 1300 – a speck of foreign matter in food or drink.[4][2]
  • c. 1390 – a minute particle; a trifle, a jot.[4]
  • c. 1400 – a spot or blemish; figuratively, a fault, in Pearl.[4]
  • before 1522 – Scottish verb mote, to find fault (obsolete).[4]
  • 1550 – a straw, a stalk of hay.[4]
  • 1585 – an atom (obsolete by 1601).[4]
  • 1825 – verb, to remove motes from wool or cotton.[4]
  • 1842 – an imperfection in cotton fibre.[4][13]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A tiny particle, especially of dust floating in the air: motes of dust drifting through the lamplight.[13][15][7][4]
  2. Something very small or trivial; a trifle, a jot.[4][2]
  3. A small seed fragment or other impurity left in cotton after ginning, or a dark spot it leaves in yarn or cloth.[13][4]
  4. the mote in someone's eye: a small fault noticed in another person by someone blind to their own greater one, after Matthew 7:3.[9][2]
  5. (dialect) A straw or a stalk.[13][4]
  6. (archaic) A speck of foreign matter in food or drink.[13][4]

Verb

  1. To remove motes from (cotton or wool).[13][4]

Word family

  • motey
  • moted

mote2 may, must

Confidence
Established
Formation
Inherited
First attested
Beowulf
Inherited from
Old English motan via Middle English
Ultimate origin
Proto-Germanic *mōtaną

Etymology

The word for "may" is inherited from Middle English moten,[13][2] inherited from Old English mōtan (“to be allowed to, be able to, have to”),[13][4][9][15] the present tense of which, mōt, survives in this archaic verb, while its past tense mōste became must.[15][3][6][10] It is one of the preterite-present verbs,[4][9] from Proto-Germanic *mōtaną,[6][3][16] and is cognate with Old Frisian mōta (“to have to, be able to, be permitted to”), Old Saxon mōtan, Middle Dutch moeten, Dutch moeten (“to have to”), Old High German muozan, German müssen (“to have to”) and Gothic 𐌲𐌰𐌼𐍉𐍄𐌰𐌽 (gamōtan, “to find room, have permission”).[4][6][16][8] It is also related to the nouns muoza (“opportunity, permission”), modern German Muße (“leisure”), and Old English ǣmetta (“leisure”).[4][8] The further origin is uncertain and disputed:[4][8] Barnhart and Etymonline connect it with the root of mete, to measure, from Proto-Indo-European *med- (“to take appropriate measures”), though Etymonline adds that this old suggestion has lately been doubted,[3][6] and Kroonen bases it on a root *mod- seen in an Armenian verb meaning "to approach, come close".[16]

Earliest recorded meaning

To be allowed to, may, and to have to, must: both senses are in Beowulf.[4] The Merriam-Webster Unabridged gives its first known use as before the 12th century.[13]

Semantic evolution

In Old English the verb expressed both permission and necessity.[4][13] The necessity sense was taken over by the past form moste, which, Etymonline explains, was used as a present tense from about 1300, following the habit of using the past subjunctive as a polite present, and which eventually displaced mote as must.[6][4] The present mote in the sense "must" is last recorded in 1579, and with the sense "may" it lasted into the 19th century, last in 1812.[4] It survived longest in wishes and oaths, such as so mote I thee, so may I thrive;[4] Johnson (1755) gave it only as an obsolete form of might, quoting Spenser's Faerie Queene.[17] Ballads collected in Scotland in the early 19th century still have God mot thee save,[14] and the phrase so mote it be, so may it be, is now its only use.[10][11]

Timeline

  • Old English – to be permitted to, may; and to have to, must (both in Beowulf).[4]
  • Old English – in wishes, may, in the Paris Psalter.[4]
  • before 1325 – past forms, might, could, in Genesis and Exodus.[4]

Meanings

Verb

  1. (archaic) May, might.[13][15][9]
  2. so mote it be: so may it be; amen.[10][11]

Usage notes

Several other words have been spelled mote: a mound or castle hill, borrowed from Anglo-Norman mote, related to motte and moat;[4][13][9] a note on a hunting horn, from Old French mot;[9][2] an obsolete astronomical word for the motion of a heavenly body, from Latin mōtus;[4][9] and a spelling of moot.[10][11]

References

  1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j 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 d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  4. ^ 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 39 40 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  5. ^ a b 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 Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  7. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  8. ^ a b c d e f Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  9. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  10. ^ a b c d e Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  11. ^ a b c d e f Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
  12. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
  13. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  14. ^ a b 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)
  15. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
  16. ^ a b c Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
  17. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.

Related etymologies

  • hen · also from Old English
  • windy · also from Old English
  • procession · also from Old English
  • sweetie · also from Old English
  • tame · also from Old English
  • blush · also from Old English
  • unnamed · also from Old English
  • springer · also from Old English
Cite this entry

“Mote.” Etymologically, 7 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/en/mote. Accessed 7 Nov. 2026.

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