muet

Forms

muet (feminine muette, masculine plural muets, feminine plural muettes)^[1] Old French mu, mut, mui beside the derivative muet.^[1] Old French also had the diminutive muel, which Littré calls by far the commoner form.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is formed from Old French mu (“mute”) + -et, an expressive diminutive of the old adjective for “unable to speak” (1050).^[4][5][6] The Old French adjective is from Latin mūtus (“mute”).^[4][7][3] It went out of use in the 16th century, when Ronsard already called it an old word, but survived longer in the feminine, in rage mue (“dumb rabies”) (1387–1389).^[5][3]

Rey explains the Latin word as properly naming one who can only utter the sound /mu/, first of animals and then of people, and links it with a root Proto-Indo-European *mu- symbolising closed lips.^[5] Elsewhere the Latin word survives without a suffix: Italian muto, Spanish mudo, Portuguese mudo, Catalan mut, Romanian mut.^[3][8] The diminutive muel was the usual form in the Middle Ages and survives in the far north-east.^[3][2]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is first recorded as a noun, “a person unable to speak”, in Guernes de Pont-Sainte-Maxence's Vie de saint Thomas (1174).^[4][5] The adjective follows in Chrétien de Troyes's Yvain (1176–1181) for someone who keeps silent on purpose, and in the Dolopathos (about 1210) for someone unable to speak.^[4][5]

Semantic evolution

From the start the word wavered between “silent” and “deprived of speech”, and in Old French it stayed rarer than mu.^[5] In the 16th century it was applied to things that signify without words (1550), as in douleur muette (1558).^[4][5] The noun named the mutes of the Ottoman sultans, servants who spoke only by signs and strangled those who had displeased the ruler (1585).^[4]

The 17th century brought muet d'étonnement “speechless with amazement” (Corneille, 1647), the sense “making no sound” (1676) and the phonetic use for letters not pronounced: h muette (1647), consonnes muettes (1690), e muet (1694).^[4][5] The 19th century added carte muette (1826) and la grande muette, Clemenceau's ironic name for the army, whose soldiers had no vote (1899).^[5][4] In 20th-century cinema muet was opposed to parlant (1929).^[5][4]

English mute is from Old French muet, with its form later brought closer to Latin.^[9]

Timeline

• 1174 – First record, as a noun, in Guernes de Pont-Sainte-Maxence.^[4]
• 1176–1181 – Chrétien de Troyes uses the adjective of someone who keeps silent.^[4]
• 16th century – The older mu goes out of use.^[5][3]
• 1585 – Noël du Fail uses the noun for the sultan's mute servants.^[4]
• 1647 – Muet d'étonnement in Corneille's Héraclius, and Vaugelas's h muette.^[4]
• 1694 – The Académie records e muet.^[4]
• 1899 – Clemenceau's la grande muette “the army”.^[4][5]
• 1929 – Le muet “silent cinema”.^[4]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Unable to speak; mute: muet de naissance, sourd et muet.^[10][4]
2. Temporarily unable to speak because of strong emotion: muet de stupeur.^[10][4]
3. Keeping silent, saying nothing.^[4][2]
4. Expressed without words: une douleur muette, un reproche muet.^[4][5]
5. (phonetics) Written but not pronounced: e muet, h muet.^[1][4]
6. (cinema) Without a soundtrack: film muet.^[1][5]
7. Carte muette: a map without names.^[2][5]

Noun

1. A mute person.^[1][10]
2. Le muet: silent cinema.^[4]
3. La grande muette: the army.^[10][5]

Word family

• sourd-muet
• muettement

Related words

• amuïr
• mutisme
• mutité
• Latin mūtus
• English mute

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Littré, Émile (1873–1877), Dictionnaire de la langue française, 4 vols. and supplement, Paris: Hachette
3. ^ a b c d e f Bloch, Oscar; Wartburg, Walther von (1989), Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française, 8th ed., Paris: Presses universitaires de France
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v Trésor de la langue française informatisé (2004), ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine, atilf.fr/tlfi; electronic version of Imbs, Paul; Quemada, Bernard, eds. (1971–1994), Trésor de la langue française, Paris: CNRS / Gallimard
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
6. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (2005), Le Grand Robert de la langue française, electronic version, Paris: Le Robert
7. ^ Wartburg, Walther von, et al. (1922–2002), Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, 25 vols., Bonn / Leipzig / Basel: Klopp / Teubner / Zbinden, p. 6/3, 312a
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
9. ^ Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
10. ^ a b c d Rey-Debove, Josette; Rey, Alain, eds. (2007), Le Petit Robert de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert