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''mote'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

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''mote'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260717141042-00-⌔

mote - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

mote (plural motes)

  • (literary or puristic, otherwise archaic) A small particle; a speck.
    • ✤ Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.1
    • ✤ What shall a Mote up to a Monarch rise?
      An Emmet match an Emperor in might?      2
    • ✤ I wanted to shrink myself to a mote of dust, plunge into this pool I held in my own cyclopean hands, soar down these runs of light to places where light itself was born from this colloquy of dust.3

Verb

mote (third-person singular simple present mote, no present participle, simple past and past participle must)

  • (archaic) May or might. [from 9th c.]
    • ✤ he […] kept aloofe for dread to be descryde,/Untill fit time and place he mote espy,/Where he mote worke him scath and villeny.4
  • (obsolete) Must. [9th–17th c.]
  • (archaic) Forming subjunctive expressions of wish: may. [from 9th c.]
    • ✤ ‘I shall not take Vengeance into my own Hands. The Goddess will do what She will.’ ‘So mote it be,’ said the Grandmaster.5

Noun

mote (plural motes)

  • (obsolete) A meeting for discussion.
    • ✤ a wardmote in the city of London
  • (obsolete) A body of persons who meet for discussion, especially about the management of affairs.
    • ✤ *a folk mote *
  • (obsolete) A place of meeting for discussion.

Noun

mote (plural motes)

  • A tiny computer for remote sensing; a component element of smartdust.

Pronunciation

  • (General American) IPA: /moʊt/
  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /məʊt/
  • Audio (Southern England): 🔊
  • Rhymes: -əʊt
  • Homophone: moat

Etymology 1

From Middle English mot, from Old English mot (“grain of sand; mote; atom”), from Proto-West Germanic ﹡mot (“grain of dirt or sand, speck”). Perhaps linked to English mud.6

Compare West Frisian mot (“peat dust”), Dutch mot (“dust from turf; sawdust; grit”), Low German mut (“peat dust, grit”), Norwegian mutt (“speck; mote; splinter; chip”), Italian mota (“mud”), Spanish mota (“speck”).

Etymology 2

From Middle English moten, from Old English mōtan (“to be allowed, be able to, have the opportunity to, be compelled to, may, must”), from Proto-Germanic ﹡mōtaną (“to be able to, have to, be delegated”), from Proto-Indo-European ﹡med- (“to acquire, possess, be in charge of”). Cognate with Dutch moeten (“to have to, must”), German müssen (“to have to, must”), Ancient Greek μέδω (médō, “to prevail, dominate, rule over”). Related to empty.

Etymology 3

See moot (“a meeting”).

Etymology 4

Clipping of remote, with allusion to the other sense of mote (“a speck of dust”).

Printed 2026-07-17.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Matthew 7:5: ↩

  2. a. 1729, Edward Taylor, Meditation. Joh. 14.2. I go to prepare a place for you: ↩

  3. 1979, J.G. Ballard, The Unlimited Dream Company, chapter 9: ↩

  4. 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book VI, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC: ↩

  5. 1980, Erica Jong, Fanny: ↩

  6. Worcester, Joseph Emerson (1910: Worcester’s academic dictionary: a new etymological dictionary of the English language, p. 371 ↩

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Secondary

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