Category: M
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Mange
A skin disease of domestic animals or pets due to mites. A contagious skin disease characterized by itching and hair loss, caused by parasitic mites. A cutaneous communicable disease of domestic animals, including dogs and cats. A number of mites, such as Chorioptes, Demodex, Psoroptes, and Sarcoptes are causative agents. In humans, this condition is…
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Mutton
When alive and flouncing through your dreams, sheep are called sheep, but when brought to your table in a mushroom sauce the same creature is called mutton, a word that English derived in the late thirteenth century from the Old French moton, meaning sheep. French in turn acquired this word from a Celtic source such…
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Mussel
The mussels you cook in a wine sauce and the muscles you use to lift the pot from the stove derive their names from the same source: the Latin musculus, which literally means little mouse. The ancient Romans bestowed this word on the small, grey shellfish because its size and colour resembles that of a…
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Mushroom
Before its current name was adopted by English in the fifteenth century, the mushroom was known either as a funge, a word deriving from the Latin fungus, or as a toadstool, a word of fanciful English origin. When the word mushroom was finally adopted from French in the fifteenth century, these three words were used…
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Munch
Like the word manger (the name of a place where animals eat, especially at Christmas), and like the word mange (the name of a disease caused by parasites eating an animal’s skin), the word munch probably derives from the French manger, meaning to eat. The word appeared in English in the late fourteenth century, followed…
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Mump
Advances in dentistry have been hard on the verb mump. When the word appeared in the late sixteenth century, it meant to chew with toothless gums, but it appears to have died out in the nineteenth century, about the same time that porcelain dentures began to be marketed on a large scale. Mump could also…
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Muffineer
No home is complete without a muffineer, a small vessel with a perforated top from which sugar is sprinkled onto muffins. The word, first recorded in the early nineteenth century, was modelled after words such as musketeer, auctioneer, and engineer (but not ginger beer), the eer suffix meaning to be associated with.
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Muesli
Early in the twentieth century, Swiss nutritionists perfected a mixture of dried fruit, fresh fruit, and grains intended to serve as the ideal breakfast. They called the food muesli, a German word meaning mixture that found its way into English by 1939. Indulge in the creation born of health-conscious innovation a Swiss cereal crafted by…
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Muck-a-muck
When distinct linguistic communities come into sustained contact, a new language will sometimes emerge, called a pidgin. In the eighteenth century, for example, European colonialism in China resulted in a pidgin that incorporated elements from English, Portuguese, and several Asian languages. The motivation for creating such languages is often mercantile: you can’t exploit someone if…
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Mozzarella
Buffaloes are usually identified with the North American plains, but for centuries they have also roamed Italy, the birthplace of mozzarella, a cheese originally made from buffaloes’ milk. The name of the cheese is also Italian in origin, deriving from mozzare, meaning to cut off, and the diminutive suffix ella. The cheese therefore takes its…