Other forms: months
A month is one of the twelve parts of a year. Next month, a month ago, three months.
Calendar months vary from twenty-eight to thirty-one days, which is why a lunar month of about twenty-nine and a half days no longer matches any of them. In contracts, a month means a calendar month unless stated. Note monthly; month in, month out; a month of Sundays, meaning a very long time; and that the word and moon are the same root, because months were counted by the moon before they were counted by anything else.
1nounmonthOne of the twelve parts of a year.
“We're moving house next month, so everything is already in boxes.”
month is a period of time.
Old English monath comes from mona, the moon — the same Proto-Indo-European root that gives Latin mensis and Greek men. Every European word for a month is a moon word, because that is what people counted with.
Middle English
moneth
English, today
month
Built from
From Middle English moneth. From Middle English moneth, from Old English mōnaþ, from Proto-West Germanic mānōþ, from Proto-Germanic mēnōþs (“month”), from Proto-Indo-European mḗh₁n̥s (“moon, month”), probably derived from meh₁- (“measure”) with moon-cycles being used to measure time. Related to moon. Cognate with stq Mound (“month”), Dutch maand (“month”), German Low German Maand (“month”), German Monat (“month”), Danish måned (“month”), Swedish månad (“month”), Icelandic mánuður (“month”). Eclipsed non-native calend, borrowed from kalendae.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA