moss

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A small, soft, green plant with no flowers that grows in thick patches on damp ground, trees and stones.

   Soft green moss covered the old gravestones.

2. 2
   verb

   To become covered with moss.

   The old stone wall had mossed over with age.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Moss is an Old English word from a Germanic root whose relatives could mean both the plant and a bog or swamp. The swamp sense is the earliest recorded in English and remains in parts of northern England and Scotland, though the plant sense appeared soon afterward.

From Middle English mos, from Old English mos (“bog, marsh, moss”), from Proto-West Germanic *mos (“marsh, moss”), from Proto-Germanic *musą (“marsh, moss”), from Proto-Indo-European *mews- (“moss”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian Moas (“moss”), West Frisian moas (“moss”), Dutch mos (“moss”), German Low German Moss (“moss”), German Moos (which shows the same polysemy of "moss" and "bog, fen"), Danish mos (“moss”), Swedish mossa (“moss”), Icelandic mosi (“moss”), Latin muscus (“moss”), Russian мох (mox, “moss”), Polish mech. Doublet of mousse.

Topics

External links

• Google Images
• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary