Wiktionary

mattock

English edit

 
A cutter mattock

Etymology edit

From Middle English mattok (“mattock, pickaxe”), from Old English mattuc, meottoc, mettoc (“mattock, fork, trident”), from Proto-West Germanic *mattjuk (“mattock, ploughshare”), from Proto-Indo-European *met- (“to cut, reap”). Related to Old High German medela (“plough”), Middle High German metze, metz (“knife”), Latin mateola (“implement for digging in the soil”), Polish motyka (“hoe, mattock”), Russian моты́га (motýga, “hoe, mattock”), Lithuanian matikkas (“mattock”), Sanskrit मत्य (matyà, “harrow, roller, club”). More at mason.

Pronunciation edit

  • IPA(key): /ˈmætək/
  • Audio (Southern England)(file)
  • Rhymes: -ætək

Noun edit

mattock (plural mattocks)

  1. An agricultural tool whose blades are at right angles to the body, similar to a pickaxe.
    • 2020, Hilary Mantel, The Mirror and the Light, Fourth Estate, page 695:
      Workmen, breaking up an old floor, have come to him, mattocks in their hands, dismayed: ‘Mr Richard, see what we have turned up ...’

Descendants edit

  • → Irish: matóg
  • → Welsh: batog

Translations edit

Verb edit

mattock (third-person singular simple present mattocks, present participle mattocking, simple past and past participle mattocked)

  1. To cut or dig with a mattock.

See also edit

Further reading edit

Middle English edit

Noun edit

mattock

  1. Alternative form of mattok
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