| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. |
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Appendix I
Indo-European Roots |
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| ENTRY: | m -2 |
| DEFINITION: | To measure. Contracted from *me 1-.
Derivatives include piecemeal, immense, meter1, geometry, moon, and semester.
I. Basic form m-. 1. Suffixed form *m-lo-. meal2; piecemeal, from Old English m l, “measure, mark, appointed time, time for eating, meal,” from Germanic *mlaz. 2. Suffixed form *m-ti-. a. measure, mensural; commensurate, dimension, immense, from Latin mt r, to measure; b. Metis, from Greek mtis, wisdom, skill. 3. Possibly Greek metron, measure, rule, length, proportion, poetic meter (but referred by some to med-): meter1, meter2, meter3, –meter, metrical, –metry; diameter, geometry, isometric, metrology, metronome, symmetry. 4. Reduplicated zero-grade form *mi-m-. mahout, maund, from Sanskrit mimte, he measures.
II. Extended and suffixed forms *mn-, *mn-en-, *mn- t-, *mn-s-, moon, month (an ancient and universal unit of time measured by the moon). 1. moon; Monday, from Old English mna, moon, from Germanic *mnn-. 2. month, from Old English mnath, month, from Germanic *mnth-. 3. meno-; amenorrhea, catamenia, dysmenorrhea, emmenagogue, menarche, meniscus, menopause, from Greek mn, mn, month. 4. menses, menstrual, menstruate; bimestrial, semester, trimester, from Latin mnsis, month. (Pokorny 3. m- 703, mnt 731.) |
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| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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