Other forms: mosses
Moss is the soft green carpet that grows on damp stones, walls and old trees. Covered in moss, moss on the roof, scrape the moss off.
Mosses have no roots and no flowers, and they absorb water directly through their surfaces, which is why they need damp and why they dry out and revive. Sphagnum moss builds peat bogs and was used as a wound dressing in the First World War. In northern England a moss is also a bog. Note a rolling stone gathers no moss, a proverb whose meaning people argue about in opposite directions.
1nounmossA soft green plant growing on damp stones and trees.
“The whole north wall is green with moss.”
moss is a plant.
Old English mos meant a bog before it meant the plant — the place came first and the plant took its name from where it grew. That is why moss still means a bog in northern place names.
Proto-Indo-European
*mews- — moss
Proto-Germanic
*musą — bog, moss
Proto-West Germanic
*mos
Old English
mos — bog, marsh, moss
Middle English
mos
English, today
moss
From Middle English mos, from Old English mos (“bog, marsh, moss”), from Proto-West Germanic mos, from Proto-Germanic musą (“bog, moss”), from Proto-Indo-European mews- (“moss”). 2 Cognate with frr möösk (“moss”), stq Moas (“moss”), West Frisian moas (“moss”), gsw Mies (“moss”), Dutch mos (“moss; lichen; marsh, swamp”), German and lb Moos (“moss”), Low German Moss (“moss”), Danish mos (“moss”), mose (“bog; moor”), Faroese and Icelandic mosi (“moss”), Norwegian Bokmål mose (“moss”), Norwegian Nynorsk mose, Swedish mossa, mosse (“raised bog”); also Latin muscus (“moss”), Bulgarian мъх (“moss”), Czech and Polish mech (“moss”), mk мов (“moss”), Russian and Ukrainian мох (“moss”), Serbo-Croatian ма̀ховина, màhovina (“moss”), Slovak mach (“moss”), Slovene mah (“moss; raised bog; marsh; velvet; down, fluff”), Armenian մամուռ (“moss”). a doublet of mousse.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA