Moneth

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An obsolete spelling of month, referring to one of the twelve divisions of the calendar year lasting about thirty days
2. An archaic form of the word for the unit of time roughly equal to thirty days, one of the twelve parts of a year
3. Old-fashioned spelling for a calendar period of around four weeks, the span of time marked by one cycle of the moon

Etymology: The word "moneth" is simply an older spelling of "month," and its story runs back to the sky. Its ancestor in Old English was "mōnaþ," and it is directly tied to "moon": the word is related to "moon," and the two share a root meaning roughly "measure." Early peoples marked time by the moon's cycles, so the name for a month was built on the lunar cycle itself. The same word appears across the Germanic languages, with cognates such as Dutch "maand," German "Monat," Danish "måned," Swedish "månad," and Icelandic "mánuður." This family resemblance shows how deep the link between the moon and timekeeping runs in northern Europe. Old English did not have only this native word for the month. Latin "calendae," the first day of the Roman month, entered English as a borrowed term, but it was later replaced by "month," which had already become the everyday word in English.

Synonyms: month