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Origin and history of mace

mace(n.1)

"heavy one-handed metal weapon, often with a spiked head, for striking," c. 1300, from Old French mace "a club, scepter" (Modern French massue), from Vulgar Latin *mattea (source also of Italian mazza, Spanish maza "mace"), from Latin mateola (in Late Latin also matteola) "a kind of mallet." The Latin word perhaps is cognate with Sanskrit matyam "harrow, club, roller," Old Church Slavonic motyka, Russian motyga "hoe," Old High German medela "plow" [de Vaan, Klein].

As a ceremonial symbol of authority or office, a scepter or staff having somewhat the form of a mace of war, it is attested from mid-14c. Related: Mace-bearer.

also from c. 1300

mace(n.2)

"spice made from dry outer husk of nutmeg," late 14c., from Old French macis (in English taken as a plural and stripped of its -s), a word of uncertain origin, sometimes said to be a scribal error for Latin macir, the name of a red spicy bark from India, but OED finds this etymology unlikely.

also from late 14c.

Mace(n.3)

chemical spray originally used in riot control, 1966, technically Chemical Mace, a proprietary name (General Ordnance Equipment Corp, Pittsburgh, Pa.), probably so called for its use as a weapon, in reference to mace (n.1). The verb, "to spray with Mace," is attested by 1968. Related: Maced; macing.

also from 1966

Entries linking to mace

machete(n.)

"heavy knife or cutlass," used as a weapon and tool by the Spanish in the Americas, 1590s (in pseudo-Spanish form macheto), from Spanish machete "a chopping knife," probably a diminutive of macho "sledge hammer," alteration of mazo "club," which is probably [Barnhart] a dialectal variant of maza "mallet," from Vulgar Latin *mattea "war club" (see mace (n.1)). An alternative explanation traces macho to Latin marculus "a small hammer," diminutive of marcus "hammer," from a base parallel to that of Latin malleus (see mallet).

mashie(n.)

in golf, "straight-faced niblick," (Linskill's "Golf," 1889, calls it "a cross between a niblick and a lofting-iron"), historical version of a modern five iron, 1881, mashy, from Scottish, probably named for a mason's hammer, from French massue "club," from Vulgar Latin *mattiuca, from Latin mateola "a tool for digging" (see mace (n.1)). Related: Mashie-niblick (1903).

mattock(n.)

"instrument for loosening soil in digging, shaped like a pickaxe but with broad instead of pointed ends," Middle English mattok, from Old English mttoc, formerly said to be probably from Vulgar Latin *matteuca "club," which is related to Latin mateola, a kind of mallet (see mace (n.1)), but this is not certain, and synonymous Russian motyka, Polish motyka, Lithuanian matikas, as well as Old High German medela "plow," Middle High German metz "knife" suggest rather a PIE *mat- as source of the Latin, Germanic, and Slavic words. OED says similar words in Welsh and Gaelic are from English.