Where does “meal” come from?
I need to work through this etymology chain carefully, but I notice there's a significant problem: the chain provided (mole → moll → Moll → Mary → μέσπιλον → mel- → mel- → mel-) doesn't clearly connect to the headword "meal" in English, and the meaning is marked as unknown.
The chain appears to trace back through Greek and PIE roots related to "mel-" (which typically means "honey" or "sweet"), but the connection to English "meal" (which typically means "ground grain" or "a time of eating") is not established by this chain.
Given the rules require me to:
1. State only what the chain supports
2. Not invent intermediate steps
3. Provide accurate etymology
I cannot write a reliable one-sentence summary because the provided chain does not adequately support or explain the etymology of "meal" as commonly understood. To do so
meal (English): Food that is prepared and eaten, usually at a...
Definitions
- Food that is prepared and eaten, usually at a...
Ancestry of “meal”, step by step
| Step | Language | Word | Meaning |
|---|
| 1 | English | molé | Alternative spelling of mole |
| 2 | English | Moll | — |
| 3 | English | mary | A male homosexual |
| 4 | French | marie | first-person singular present indicative of... |
| 5 | Old French | Marie | — |
| 6 | Latin | Marīa | — |
| 7 | Ancient Greek | Μαρία | — |
| 8 | Hebrew | מִרְיָם | — |
| 9 | Aramaic | מרים | bitter |
| 10 | Biblical Hebrew | מִרְיָם | — |
Words derived from “meal”