Word.ws English Dictionary

motte

/ˈmɒt/

motte noun: a raised earth mound, often topped with a wooden or stone structure and surrounded with a ditch. Also the alternative form of mott.

Noun

motte (plural mottes)

  1. A raised earth mound, often topped with a wooden or stone structure and surrounded with a ditch.
    • The motte was a mound made of earth and surrounded by a ditch.2013 September 13, Richard Huscroft, The Norman Conquest: A New Introduction, Routledge, →ISBN
  2. An argument which is uncontroversial and easy to defend (in the context of a motte and bailey fallacy).
    • Coordinate term: bailey
    • "Birds are dinosaurs" is the bailey; "birds are more similar to dinosaurs than anything else" is the motte.2023 February 10, “Why Birds Are Not Dinosaurs (And Why It Matters)”, in Answers in Genesis, archived from the original on 15 Mar 2023

Proper noun capitalized: Motte

Motte

  1. A surname.

Also used as

motte is also the alternative form of mott.

Forms of motte

pluralmottes

Origin of motte

From French motte, from Anglo-Norman/Old French motte (“mound, hillock”). Doublet of moat.

Alternative forms.

* As a French, Walloon, and West Flemish surname, from Old French mot, motte (“embankment, hill, mound”), from Medieval Latin mota (“fortified height”), which could be of Celtic origin and from Gaulish *mutt, *mutta (compare Welsh mwd (“vault, arch, canopy”), Irish móta (“moat”), though this itself could have been borrowed from the English) or otherwise of Germanic origin and from the root of mud. Compare Delamotte, Demotte, Lamotte. * As an English surname, variant of Mott. * As a German surname, perhaps from Motten in Bavaria, first attested 837, from the personal name Moto (compare *mōd (“courage, bravery”)).

Words formed from motte

Questions about motte

What does motte mean?
Motte means a raised earth mound, often topped with a wooden or stone structure and surrounded with a ditch.
What part of speech is motte?
Motte can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce motte?
Motte is pronounced /ˈmɒt/.
What is the plural of motte?
The plural of motte is mottes.

Words near motte in the dictionary

  1. Mott cell
  2. Mott cells
  3. Motta
  4. Mottama
  5. Mottas
  6. motte
  7. motte and bailey
  8. motte-and-bailey
  9. mottephobia
  10. Mottershead
  11. Mottersheads

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: motte (page history and authors); Motte (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “motte.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/motte. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.