Mace

How to spell mace

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce mace

What does mace mean?

1. nounA heavy club, often with a spiked or flanged metal head, used as a medieval weapon.
2. nounAn ornamental staff carried as a symbol of office or authority in a parliament or civic ceremony.
3. nounAn aromatic spice made from the dried lacy covering of the nutmeg seed.

Mace in a sentence

• The museum displayed a medieval mace alongside the suit of armour.

• The mace was placed on the table to signal that the session had begun.

• The recipe called for a pinch of ground mace to flavour the sauce.

• The knight swung his mace to break through the enemy's shield.

• The sergeant-at-arms carried the gilded mace into the chamber.

• She added mace and cinnamon to the warm spiced cake.

Where does mace come from?

Language of origin: French

The weapon sense of mace came into English in the 1200s from Old French mace, meaning a heavy club, which traces back to a Vulgar Latin form mattea, thought to mean a mallet or beater. The original object was a brutally simple thing: a wooden or metal club with a weighted, often spiked, head used to smash through armour, and from that fearsome tool grew the dignified ceremonial staff carried before kings, mayors, and parliaments as a badge of authority. Curiously, the culinary mace (the lacy red covering of the nutmeg seed) has a completely separate origin, arriving through Old French macis from Latin macir, a name for an aromatic Eastern bark, and only happens to be spelled the same. The brand-name spray called Mace borrows the weapon's menacing image. Because the word is short and phonetically transparent, its spelling stays close to its medieval French form, with the soft 'c' before 'e' doing the work of an 's' sound.

How the word is built

• mace (single root; from Old French mace 'heavy club', via Vulgar Latin mattea 'mallet')