Word.ws English Dictionary

portmote

portmote noun: a court, or mote, held in a port town.

Noun

portmote (plural portmotes)

  1. (UK, obsolete) A court, or mote, held in a port town.
    • And in England it hath always been held, that the king is lord of the whole shore, and particularly is the guardian of the ports and havens, which are the inlets and gates of the realm: and therefore, so early as the reign of king John, we find ships seised by the king's officers for putting in at...1771, William, Sir Blackstone, “Of the King's Prerogative”, in Commentaries on the Laws of England, volume 1, page 264

Forms of portmote

pluralportmotes

Origin of portmote

From Middle English portemot, portemote, portmot, portmote; equivalent to port + mote; compare Anglo-Latin portimōtus.

Questions about portmote

What does portmote mean?
Portmote means a court, or mote, held in a port town.
What part of speech is portmote?
Portmote is a noun.
What is the plural of portmote?
The plural of portmote is portmotes.

Words near portmote in the dictionary

  1. Portmeirion
  2. portmen
  3. portmoot
  4. portmoots
  5. Portmore
  6. portmote
  7. portmotes
  8. Portmuthian
  9. Portmuthians
  10. Portner
  11. Portners

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: portmote (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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