Magnet
The ancient Greeks knew about the magnetic property of the loadstone, and in the Middle Ages, when it was realized that it always pointed north-south, it was begun to be used in navigation. The ancient Greeks called the loadstone Magnes lithos, simply because it was mined in a city in Asia Minor whose name was – Magnesia. That is where the word comes from. (Flavell & Flavell 3 2005: 167)
Malarkey
Hogwash. Claptrap. Hooey. Drivel. Folderol. English is full of words for ‘nonsense’. I wonder why. My favourite one is malarkey. Don’t know why. “I’m not interested in all this scientific malarkey.” “You don’t believe in ghosts and all that malarkey, do you?”
Manager
A Manager in German is not (quite) the same as a manager in English. A German manager is rather more important, a rather high-ranking executive, and the corresponding English word is usually executive rather than manager. In England, the supermarkets round the corner have a manager. In football, we have the same problem again. For what in English is called a manager, in German we use another English loanword not used in English for this position, Trainer. On the other hand, German professional football clubs also have a Manager. But these are not called manager in English. They are the club secretary.
Mary, marry, merry
In British English, all three sound different: Mary is pronounced with the square vowel, marry with the trap vowel, merry with the dress vowel. In New Zealand, Mary and marry may be the same, while in some varieties of American English all three may sound the same. (Bauer 2002: 79)
Mashed potatoes
This is often spelt mash potatoes by English children. Small wonder, this is precisely what they hear. The /t/, followed and preceded by another consonant, is often left out in connected speech. This is an example of elision, and a very common form of elision. Other examples are calmed down or wronged them. (Davis 2004: 137)
Meaning
Meaning has more than one meaning. Two meanings of meaning are nicely illustrated by the difference between these sentences: (1) What’s the meaning of life? (2) What’s the meaning of life? (1) illustrates a meaning which is of more central concern in linguistics than (2). This may be obvious. The trouble is that there are intermediate uses of meaning about which there is room for disagreement. (Lyons 1981: 139)
Meat, meet, mete
All these words are pronounced the same but spelt differently. They are homophones. To have two words which are homophones is quite common in many European languages but three is rather unusual. In English, however, there are several such cases of ‘triple homophones’: take by/buy/bye or pair/pear/pare or so/sow/sew or oar/or/ore or rode/road/rowed or cue/queue/Kew or right/write/rite or I/eye/ay. If you wanted to add q or i or wright, you would even get ‘quadruple homophones’.
Meliorism
George Eliot believed she had coined this word (and the corresponding word meliorist) to express her belief that, in spite of everything, the world is gradually improving and that humans can aid its betterment: “I don’t believe I have ever heard anybody use the word meliorist except myself.” Her contemporaries believed her but later it turned out that the word had been around for some 20 years before she started using it. It is funny to see how words come into being and that they can be ‘invented’ by several people at the same time, independently of each other.
Melody
On more than one occasion, surveys have been carried out to find what people considered the most beautiful words in English. One of the words which almost inevitably appears in these lists is melody. It seems to satisfy all the needs: it contains more than one and less than four syllables, it contains a nasal, it contains a liquid, its consonants vary from syllable to syllable, its vowels vary from syllable to syllable. Other words which come near to this ideal are lullaby, mellifluous or luminous. If one discards words which were apparently chosen for their meaning not their sound (mother or enthusiasm), none of the words in any of the surveys includes . (Crystal 2007: 167-9)
Mental
A crazy word. Although originally a formal, but neutral word, meaning ‘referring to the mind’ (derived from Latin mens), it later came to be used euphemistically, for ‘insane’, and now has taken another twist and is often heard to refer to somebody who is crazy about something: “She is mental about punk rock”. (Gramley/Pätzold 1992: 34-5) Perhaps a degree of insanity is required there.
Merkin
Seventeenth-century prostitues used to shave their pubic hair in order to get rid of lice. They then wore a special pubic wig instead. Such a wig was called merkin. (Forsyth 2016: 175)
Middle class
Reference to middle class is about twice as common in American English as in British, and the word middle class (singular) occurs about five times more in American English than in British. According to a 2015 survey, American middle class entails a secure job and the ability to save money. Many Americans do not think that it involves house ownership or a university degree. In Britain, however, 60% of the population identified as working class in 2012, as many as in 1983. Their class identity has little to do with their current situation – they may own houses and have a university degree – but with where they come from. In America, “I’m middle class” is seen as meaning ‘I’m average, I’m like other people’, in Britain it is understood as meaning that you aspire to be above others. (Murphy 2018: 204-206)
Monkey’s wedding
This is a well-known expression in South Africa, being used when you have rain and sunshine at the same time. In Portuguese, it is a vixen’s wedding, in German the devil’s wedding, in Arabic, rats are getting married, in Bulgarian, bears are getting married, in Hindi, it is a jackal’s wedding, in Korean, a tiger’s wedding, in Spanish, the snails mate. (Quinion 2009: 192-3)
Moon
If you want something difficult or impossible to obtain, you ask for the moon, if you promise something that is impossible to carry out you promise the moon, if you pay an impossibly large amount of money for something you pay the moon, and if you are elated you are over the moon. This last is said to have been invented by William Gladstone’s wife. In her family, it appears, idiomatic phrases were invented for private use, and this one made it into the general public. A fascinating idea: to hear someone use an idiom and know it was invented by you. (Flavell & Flavell 3 2000: 129-31)
Morning
Rather practically, morning contains all nasal consonants of (Standard) English, and all consonants it contains are nasals.
Mouse
The plural of mouse is mice, but in its basic sense of ‘rodent of the family Muridae’. In the sense of ‘device for moving a cursor’, however, it quite normally has the plural mouses. (Matthews 2003: 80)
Mudd
Not an English word and yet an English word. The real Mudd was Dr. Samuel Mudd, an American country doctor who, in 1865, had attended an unknown patient with a broken leg. A day after the patient had gone on his way, Dr. Mudd heard of events in the capital. The President, Lincoln, had been assassinated during a theatre performance. His assassin, William Booth, had jumped from the President’s box to the stage below and, in doing so, had broken his leg. Dr. Mudd immediately informed the police, but was himself arrested, charged with being a conspirator and sentenced to life imprisonment. He was later pardoned, not because his innocence was confirmed, but because he had helped during an outbreak of yellow fever in the prison. He was never forgiven by the general public, and his name came to be used to refer to any scoundrel. He lives on in the idiom “your name is mud”, used to say that people are angry with you because of something you have done: “If anything goes wrong, your name will be mud”. Or, to be used for yourself: “They won’t invite me. My name is mud at the moment”. (Flavell & Flavell 3 2000: 132)
Music
This is the modern spelling. Sometimes companies use older looking spellings, some real, some fake, to give an appearance of antiquity to their names or products, like Ye Penguin Archive of Musick. This is at least a historical spelling, as is musicke. Caxton in fact spelt musycque! (Cook 2004: 190)
Must
The modal auxiliary must has (at least) two different meanings. Compare: “She must work until 6 today” and “She must be around 20”. In the first sentence, must is an obligation, it expresses something which is necessary, in the second sentence it is a logical conclusion, it expresses something which is possible. The first is technically known as deontic modality, the second as epistemic modality. The difference becomes obvious when you negate the sentences, because in one case you use needn’t, in the other can’t: So we get “She needn’t work until 6 today” but “She can’t be around 20”. In a few cases, one and the same sentence may have both meanings, although the context will practically always make the meaning clear: “She must come soon”. Actually, may also has these two meanings, deontic or epistemic, but in this case the negation is the same: “She may come” could be either permission or conjecture, and in both cases the negative is “She may not come”. The double meaning of must is nicely reflected in this anecdote: During his state visit to Moscow, Fidel Castro is shown around the capital by Leonid Brezhnev. First of all, Castro is invited for a beer, which he downs in one go and praises heartily. ‘Yes’, says Brezhnev, ‘it is provided by our good friends from Czechoslovakia.’ Then Castro is chauffeured around the city, and is rather taken by the limo. ‘Yes’, says Brezhnev, ‘these cars are provided by our good friends from Czechoslovakia.’ Later on, they visit an exhibition of fine crystal, and Castro duly waxes lyrical. ‘Yes’, says Brezhnev. ‘The crystal is provided by our good friends from Czechoslovakia.’ ‘They must be very good friends,’ says Castro. ‘Yes’, says Brezhnev, ‘they must.’ (Aarons 2012: 76)