Mason

How to spell mason

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce mason

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does mason mean?

1. nounA skilled tradesperson who builds or shapes structures from stone or brick.

Mason in a sentence

• The mason cut each block of granite to fit the old wall.

• We hired a mason to repair the crumbling chimney.

Where does mason come from?

Language of origin: French

This word came into English in the early 1200s from Old French maçon, which named a builder who worked in stone. The Old French form goes back to a Late Latin word, recorded as machio or matio, meaning a maker or worker in stone, and many scholars think that Latin word was itself borrowed from a Frankish or Germanic root related to making and shaping. Over the centuries the trade gave its name to the secretive fraternal society of Freemasons, whose lodges grew out of the medieval guilds of stonecutters. The spelling trap is gentle but real: the single soft 's' sounds like a 'z', and the unstressed second syllable hides as a schwa, so writers can be tempted to double letters or add an extra vowel. The everyday surname Mason and the verb in 'masonry' both preserve the same compact spelling.

How the word is built

• mason (whole word, from Old French maçon: a stoneworker); no separable prefix or suffix