Art & MusicGreek → English
Mosaic
/moʊˈzeɪɪk/noun
A picture or pattern built from small set pieces of stone or glass.
The Greek roots
μουσεῖον
mouseîon
place of the Muses
Literally: “work of the Muses”
Follow a root:μουσεῖον2 words
The story of the word
Roman writers called the technique opus musivum, work fit for a shrine of the Muses, because the early examples decorated grottoes and fountain houses sacred to them. Medieval Latin turned that into musaicum and mosaicus, which French handed on to English. Museum comes from the same building. Mosaic with a capital M, meaning of Moses, is an unrelated word that happens to be spelled identically.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Medieval Latin → French → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
museummusicmuse
In a sentence
The floor mosaic showed a dog under a table, still holding a bone.