Moustache

How to spell moustache

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce moustache

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does moustache mean?

1. nounA strip of hair grown on a man's upper lip.

Moustache in a sentence

• He trimmed his moustache carefully before the interview.

• A thick grey moustache covered his upper lip.

Where does moustache come from?

Language of origin: French

The word arrived in English in the late 1500s from the French moustache, which the French had themselves taken from the Italian mostaccio. The Italian form descended from the Medieval Greek moustakion, a diminutive of the classical Greek mystax, which literally meant the upper lip and, by extension, the hair growing on it. So the journey runs from Greek through Italian and then French before reaching English, and that French route is exactly why the British spelling keeps the softer 'mou-' opening rather than the trimmed-down 'mus-'. The same Greek root also lies behind the rarer English word mystacial, used in zoology for whisker-like markings. Because English borrowed the fully French-looking form, the 'ou' spelling is a direct fossil of that borrowing and the main thing a writer has to remember.

How the word is built

• moustache (single root from French moustache; no separable English prefix or suffix)

British and American spelling

Moustache is the British spelling. American English spells it mustache.