August 31, 1999

mustache

I have always been curious about the origin of the word "moustache," which I understand is singular, the correct plural form being "moustaches." Any input?

First, that the standard spelling in America is now mustache, though moustache remains the usual form in Britain.

The word mustache usually refers to the hair growing on the upper lip of a human, and especially to such hair deliberately cultivated by men, often trimmed in any of various styles. The transferred senses are relatively straightforward, and include 'hairs or bristles growing near the mouth of an animal' and 'a stripe of color, or elongated feathers, on the side of the head of a bird'.

Mustache, first recorded in the sixteenth century, is most immediately a borrowing from Middle French moustache. The standard British spelling preserves the unaltered French form, though some of the early British dictionaries (such as Dr. Johnson's) preferred the Anglicized form mustache. Pronunciationwise, "MOO-stash" is occasionally heard, and in British English the stress is usually muh-STASH.

The French word was borrowed from Italian mostaccio, which, together with Spanish mostacho, gave us the English word mustachio, which refers to a usually large mustache. Ultimately the word is from Greek mystax 'the upper lip; mustache'.

The word's plural is indeed mustaches (or moustaches), if you want to use it in a sentence such as "Many of the men had mustaches." But I assume you may be asking about the use of the plural in reference to an individual man's lip hair. Occasionally mustache is used to mean 'the hair on either side of a man's upper lip', with the entire upper-lip-hair being called mustaches or a pair of mustaches. This is not very common, but should you choose to use it, the spelling is the same as the normal plural.