Dictionaries › English

mathom

Pronunciation: /ˈmæðəm/

The English word “mathom” has 1 meaning listed here.

noun

  1. A trinket or piece of bric-a-brac; a knick-knack, often used in regifting.

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Old English māþum (“treasure, object of value, jewel, ornament, gift”), from Proto-Germanic *maiþmaz (“present, gift”); introduced by J. R. R. Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings with the conceit that it was a translation of his invented language Adûni's kast, a word used by Hobbits as a generic name for items which they were unwilling to throw away, but for which they had no…

Keep exploring: in the interactive dictionary every word of a definition is a link. Open “mathom” there

More English words

About this dictionary

The English dictionary on Glottosphere has 650,529 entries with a page. Browse the English dictionary.

Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.