emmet – English noun declension

English noun forms of emmet

Noun: emmet
Singularemmet
Pluralemmets

Sample Sentences

  • He told him that he saw a vast multitude and a promiscuous, their habitations like molehills, the men as emmets […] [, New York Review of Books, 2001, p.47]
  • 1666, Dr. Edmund King, Philosophical Transactions (1665-1678) Observations Concerning Emmets or Ants, Their Eggs, Production, Progress, Coming to Maturity, Use, &c
  • What shall a Mote up to a Monarch rise?
  • An Emmet match an Emperor in might? [before 1729, Edward Taylor, "Meditation. Joh. 14.2. I go to prepare a place for you"]
  • Once a dream did weave a shade / O'er my angel-guarded bed / That an emmet lost its way / Where on grass methought I lay. [1789, William Blake, “A Dream”, in Songs of Innocence:]
  • [A benignity that] to the emmet gives / Her foresight, and intelligence that makes / The tiny creatures strong by social league. [1814, William Wordsworth, The Excursion, IV.430:]
  • We are scurrying emmets or pismires with our sad little comedies. [1993, Anthony Burgess, A Dead Man in Deptford:]

Etymology

1. Etymology tree
2. Proto-West Germanic *āmaitijā
3. Old English ǣmete
4. Middle English ampte
5. English emmet
6. From Middle English ampte, amte, amete, amote, ante, emete, emot, emotte, empt, empte, from Old English ǣmete, ǣmette, ǣmytte, ǣmætte (“ant”), from Proto-West Germanic *āmaitijā (“ant”), of uncertain and debated origin (q.v.), but probably from Proto-Germanic *ē- (“off, away”) + *maitaną (“to cut”), from Proto-Indo-European *meh₂y- (“to cut”). Doublet of ant.
7. Cognates
8. Cognate with Yola emotee, emothee (“ant”), West Frisian eamel, eamelder, eameler (“ant”), Alemannic German Ameisse (“ant”), Bavarian Åmasn, Åmeisn (“ant”), Cimbrian amasa (“ant”), Dutch emt (“ant”), German Ameise, Emse (“ant”), Low German Emk (“ant”), Vilamovian ömys (“ant”), Yiddish אַמייזע (ameyze, “ant”). See: Middle English Nouns 'ampte', Old English Nouns 'ǣmete', Dutch Nouns 'emt', German Nouns 'Ameise'.