mace
/meɪs/ noun, verb, proper noun
Forms maces macing maced
- noun A heavy fighting club.
- noun A ceremonial form of this weapon.
- noun A long baton used by some drum majors to keep time and lead a marching band. If this baton is referred to as a mace, by convention it has a ceremonial often decorative head, which, if of metal, usually is hollow and sometimes intricately worked.
- noun An officer who carries a mace as a token of authority.
- noun A knobbed mallet used by curriers to make leather supple when dressing it.
- noun A flail.
- noun (archaic) A billiard cue.
- verb To hit someone or something with a mace.
- noun A spice obtained from the outer layer of the kernel of the fruit of the nutmeg.
- noun Tear gas or pepper spray, especially for personal use.
- verb To spray in defense or attack with mace (pepper spray or tear gas) using a hand-held device.
- verb (informal) To spray a similar noxious chemical in defense or attack using an available hand-held device such as an aerosol spray can.
- noun An old money of account in China equal to one tenth of a tael.
- noun An old weight of 57.98 grains, approximately 3.8 grams.
- proper noun (countable) A male given name, a name derived from the war instrument, a mace
- proper noun (countable) A surname.
- proper noun An English surname transferred from the given name.
- proper noun A surname from Norman.
- proper noun An unincorporated community in Walnut Township, Montgomery County, Indiana, United States.
- proper noun A municipality of Croatia.
Synonyms
Etymology
From Middle English mace, borrowed from Old French mace, mache, from Vulgar Latin *mattia, *mattea, matia, (compare Italian mazza, Spanish maza), probably from Proto-West Germanic *mattjō (“cutting tool, hoe”).
From Middle English, from re-interpretation of macys as a plural (as with pea); from Latin macir. Doublet of macir.
From the name of one brand of the spray, Mace. Pepper spray may be derived from cayenne pepper, but not from mace (etymology 2 above), which is a different spice; rather, it was named after the weapon (etymology 1).
Borrowed from Javanese [Term?] and Malay [Term?], meaning "a bean".
Webster’s 1913
- noun A money of account in China equal to one tenth of a tael; also, a weight of 57.98 grains. S. W. Williams.
- noun A kind of spice; the aril which partly covers nutmegs. See Nutmeg.
- noun A heavy staff or club of metal; a spiked club; --used as weapon in war before the general use of firearms, especially in the Middle Ages, for breaking metal armor. Chaucer.
- noun Hence: A staff borne by, or carried before, a magistrate as an ensign of his authority. "Swayed the royal mace." Wordsworth.
Etymology [Jav. & Malay. mas, fr. Skr. masha a bean.]
Etymology [F. macis, L. macis, macir, Gr. makaranda the nectar or honey of a flower, a fragrant mango.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “mace”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details