The word was first recorded in English by 1325, from French. It appears in the Northern Passion, a medieval poem on the suffering and death of Christ, in a line where a man receives something from a group.
French had already used the word by the late twelfth century, and behind it lay a Latin one. The same Latin word had reached Old English separately by the eighth century. King Edgar’s laws used it to order that there be only one across his kingdom, and that no one refuse it.
In Latin, the source word was the title of a Roman goddess, at whose temple metal was struck into pieces. Her title is said to come from a verb meaning ‘to warn’, which traces to a Proto-Indo-European root, *men-, meaning ‘to think’, which may also lie behind a Greek word for ‘madness’.
MONUMENT and MONSTER are built on the Latin verb that may also lie behind this word. MONUMENT entered English by the early fourteenth century, from a Latin word for a reminder. MONSTER entered English by the late fourteenth century, from French, and the Latin behind it meant a warning sign.
