moss

From Middle English mos, from Old English mos (“bog, marsh, moss”), from Proto-West Germanic *mos (“marsh, moss”), from Proto-Germanic *musą (“marsh, moss”), from Proto-Indo-European *mews- (“moss”).

Cognate with Saterland Frisian Moas (“moss”), West Frisian moas (“moss”), Dutch mos (“moss”), German Low German Moss (“moss”), German Moos (“moss”), Danish mos (“moss”), Swedish mossa (“moss”), Icelandic mosi (“moss”), Latin muscus (“moss”), Russian мох (mox, “moss”),[1] Polish mech. Doublet of mousse.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /mɒs/
• (US) enPR: môs, IPA^(key): /mɔs/
• (cot–caught merger, Canada) enPR: mäs, IPA^(key): /mɑs/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɒs
• Rhymes: -ɔːs

moss (countable and uncountable, plural mosses)

1. Any of various small, green, seedless plants growing on the ground or on the surfaces of trees, stones, etc.; now specifically, a plant of the phylum Bryophyta (formerly division Musci).

   Hypernym: bryophyte

2. (countable) A kind or species of such plants.
3. (informal) Any alga, lichen, bryophyte, or other plant of seemingly simple structure.

   Hyponyms: alga, cryptogam, lichen

   Spanish moss

   Irish moss

   club moss

4. (now chiefly UK regional) A bog; a fen.

   the mosses of the Scottish border

• The plural form mosses is used when more than one kind of moss is meant. The singular moss is used referring to a collection of moss plants of the same kind.

moss (third-person singular simple present mosses, present participle mossing, simple past and past participle mossed)

1. (intransitive) To become covered with moss.

   An oak whose boughs were mossed with age.

2. (transitive) To cover (something) with moss.

• muscoid

• A New English dictionary on historical principles, Volume 6, Sir James Augustus Henry Murray, Sir William Alexander Craigie, Charles Talbut Onions, editors, Clarendon Press, 1908, pages 684-6

• moss on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• SMOS, SMOs, soms

• mossál

mos +‎ -j

• IPA^(key): [ˈmoʃː]

• Audio

  (file)

• Hyphenation: moss
• Rhymes: -oʃː

moss

1. second-person singular subjunctive present indefinite of mos

   Moss fogat! ― Brush your teeth! (literally, “Wash tooth!”)

Not to be confused with mos (“to wash”).