Moss
nounA small, soft green plant that grows in dense clumps on damp ground, rocks, or tree bark.
How to spell moss
4 letters · 1 syllable
How to pronounce moss
What does moss mean?
- nounA small, soft green plant that grows in dense clumps on damp ground, rocks, or tree bark.
Moss in a sentence
-
Thick moss covered the shaded side of the old stone wall.
-
She scraped the moss off the patio before laying down new gravel.
Where does moss come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
Moss comes from the Old English word 'mos', which originally meant both a bog or marsh and the soft green plant that grows in such damp places. That double sense survives in old place names and in the related word 'morass', a swampy stretch of ground. The Old English form goes back to a Germanic root shared with the Dutch 'mos' and German 'Moos', all pointing to a wet, low-growing growth. Over time the plant sense became the dominant meaning, while the older 'bog' meaning faded. Because the word is short and native, its spelling has stayed remarkably stable, with the only mild trap being the doubled final s.
How the word is built
- moss (single root from Old English mos: bog, marsh plant)
Fix your spelling for good.
Spelling Garden finds the words you personally get wrong, plants them in a garden, and brings each one back just before you would have forgotten it.
Just five minutes a day is all it takes to fix your spelling.