mint

英文詞源

mint

mint: [OE] English has two completely unconnected words mint. The ‘money factory’ comes ultimately from Latin monēta ‘mint, money’ (source also of English money). It was borrowed into prehistoric West Germanic as *munita, which in due course produced Old English mynet. This denoted ‘coin’ (as its modern German relative münze still does), and it was not until the 15th century that the modern sense ‘place where money is made’ emerged. Mint the plant originated in Greek mínthē, and reached English via Latin mentha (source of menthol [19], a German coinage) and prehistoric West Germanic *minta.
=> money; menthol

mint (n.1)

aromatic herb, Old English minte (8c.), from West Germanic *minta (cognates: Old Saxon minta, Middle Dutch mente, Old High German minza, German Minze), a borrowing from Latin menta, mentha "mint," from Greek minthe, personified as a nymph transformed into an herb by Proserpine, probably a loan-word from a lost Mediterranean language.

mint (n.2)

place where money is coined, early 15c., from Old English mynet "coin, coinage, money" (8c.), from West Germanic *munita (cognates: Old Saxon munita, Old Frisian menote, Middle Dutch munte, Old High German munizza, German münze), from Latin moneta "mint" (see money). Earlier word for "place where money is coined" was minter (early 12c.). General sense of "a vast sum of money" is from 1650s.

mint (v.)

"to stamp metal to make coins," 1540s, from mint (n.2). Related: Minted; minting. Minter "one who stamps coins to create money" is from early 12c.

mint (adj.)

"perfect" (like a freshly minted coin), 1887 (in mint condition), from mint (n.2).