muscat

Etymology

It is borrowed from Middle French muscat (“musky; muscat wine”),^[2][3][4][5] from Old Occitan muscat (“musky, having the flavour of musk”),^[2][3][6][7] from Late Latin muscātus (“having the flavour of musk”), recorded from the 6th century,^[2][6] from muscus (“musk”) and the suffix -ātus.^[2][4] The Old Occitan adjective is recorded from the 13th century, in a phrase for cinnamon with the flavour of musk, and the French noun from 1372 for the wine, the grape sense following in 1606.^[2] Etymonline instead takes the word through Italian moscato (“musky-flavoured”),^[8] which the Shorter Oxford and Weekley give as the Italian counterpart;^[7][9] Catalan moscat and Spanish moscato are related too.^[2] The Latin noun is the source of musk.^[3][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Muscat wine: 1548, in the accounts of the Treasurer of Scotland,^[2] a date Merriam-Webster Unabridged also gives.^[4] Etymonline and Dictionary.com date the word to the 1570s.^[8][10]

Semantic evolution

The wine was named first and the grape it is made from only a century later,^[5][2] as in French, where the wine sense is recorded in 1372 and the grape in 1606.^[2] In the 17th century the name was also given to fruits with a musky taste: a variety of peach (1664–1707) and several varieties of pear, a use now historical.^[2] An isolated record of 1887 applies it to St George's mushroom.^[2] Etymonline notes the earlier muscadine (1540s) and compares muscatel,^[8] a diminutive of the same word in Weekley's account,^[9] which Hoad dates from the 14th century.^[5]

Timeline

• 1548 – wine made from muscat grapes, especially a sweet white wine.^[2][4]
• 1655 – a grape with a musky taste or smell, grown for wine, raisins or the table.^[2][5]
• 1664 – a variety of peach (obsolete by 1707).^[2]
• 1675 – any of several varieties of pear.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. Any of several cultivated grapes with a musky flavour, grown for making wine and raisins and for eating: The arbour was heavy with muscat in September.^[4][11][2]
2. Muscatel, a sweet wine made from these grapes.^[4][11][2]

Related words

• musk
• muscatel
• muscadine

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 The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
4. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b c d Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
7. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
9. ^ a b Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
10. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
11. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins