Dinty Moor Maurice

A couple of weeks ago I almost included the word dint in an email. Realizing it wasn't what I wanted to say I chose another word, but it made me think it might be a good jumping-off point for a post. It's not a word I hear much any more, and is its most common use seems to be in the phrase "by dint of."

So let's look at it. Dint means force or power in the phrase (q.v.) but can also mean dent. In fact, dent is a dialectical variant of dint or dynt, dynt being an Old English word meaning a strike with a sword during fighting (tomorrow being opening day of the baseball season, I thought I'd use the word strike). Apparently a dent in armor is caused by a dint. While dint is old, the phrase "by dint of" comes from the early 1300s, the same time as the word dent appeared in English. But dent was not used as a short word for indentation until the 1560s.

As the title of the post suggests, another word for today is Moor. First, should it be capitalized or not? And what exactly is a Moor? I've encountered it particularly in Shakespeare and in architecture, so this seemed like a good post in which to clarify some more about moor. And what is the difference between moor and Moor? (If there is one.)

Let's take the various meanings for moor in chronological order.

The first moor to arrive in English is the noun that is synonymous with heath, but refers to the wet high ground (in latitude and altitude) that is peaty and often covered with heath. Moor is an Old English word (spelled mor in Old English) used of any swamp. According to etymonline.com the Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names says "The basic sense in place names is 'marsh', a kind of low-lying wetland possibly regarded as less fertile than mersc 'marsh.' The development of the senses 'dry heathland, barren upland' is not fully accounted for but may be due to the idea of infertility."

For a long time that is the only moor (or mor) in English. Until the late 1300s when the Latin word for someone from Mauritania (northwest Africa, now Algeria and Morrocco), Maurus (or Morus in Medieval Latin) came through Old French as More, which would have been even more confusing. The Romans actually got the word Maurus from the Greek Mauros. The Greek word for "black" is mauros, so even though north Africans are lighter skinned than sub-Saharan Africans they are still darker than Europeans. This word Moor should always be capitalized. A great history of Moor can be found at taneter.org.  

The final moor is a word that can be a noun or a verb. This moor is the place where, by lines or cables, you secure a ship or airship. It is also the act of securing the ship. But the place can also be called a mooring, which is a gerund and adds to the confusion. The word mooring came first, in the early 1400s, while the verb came to modern English in the late 1400s. While the verb's etymology is uncertain it is probably from the Old English word for the mooring rope, maurels, although it could have come from the Middle Low German word of the same meaning, moren. But etymonline says the noun mooring came from the verb moor, Curiouser and curiouser.

And before we leave the morass (another synonym for moor) of moor, let's look in on Maurice.

This name is French, from the Late Latin Mauritius (q.v.). For fans of Steve Miller Band the name is familiar, from the song The Joker, which also has a reference to the 1954 song by The Clovers, "Lovey Dovey", that my wife Dovie has never liked, even though it says "You're the cutest thing that I ever did see." A sentiment with which I agree.

So it is possible for a dinty Moor to moor at a moor and be named Maurice.