Moles

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A burrowing mammal that is small, typically with velvety fur and poor eyesight; a skin growth that is usually brown or black, commonly known as a beauty mark; a unit of measurement in chemistry, representing a specific amount of substance containing a set number of particles
2. A dark-furred, often blind creature that lives underground and constructs tunnels; a common dermatological feature that appears as a spot or mark on the skin; a standard scientific unit in expressing quantities of a substance in chemical reactions
3. A small, fossorial mammal known for its distinctive velvety coat and tunneling habits; a benign skin mark that varies in color and size present on humans; a fundamental measure in chemistry relating to the quantity of entities in a given sample

Etymology: The mammal's name has a split personality in its own history. Its ancestor, Old English "māl", meant a spot, mark or blemish, the same sense that gives us the skin mole, so the animal was named for a dark, soil-stained patch rather than for its burrowing. The burrowing creature itself was originally "molde" or "molle" in Middle English, which traces back to a Proto-Germanic word for "mole" or "salamander," and that older root also gave German "Molch," meaning newt. The plural "moles" is simply the plural of "mole," the English noun for the small burrowing mammal. Because the plural is spelled the same as the verb form, the word's two main lineages are easy to confuse on the page, but they came into English through separate routes.

Synonyms: tumor, lump, growth