Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: MOTTE |
MOTTENoun1. A clump of trees in a prairie. |
Date "MOTTE" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1781. (references) |
Etymology: Motte \Motte\, noun. [Compare to the French expression motte clod, clump, or hillock.]. (references) |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
A motte-and-bailey is a form of castle. Many were built in Britain and France in the 11th and 12th centuries, especially in England following the Norman Conquest of 1066.The motte is a raised earth mound, usually artificial and topped with a wooden or stone structure. The earth for the mound would be taken from a ditch, dug around the motte or around the whole castle. The outer surface of the mound could be covered with clay or strengthened with wooden supports.
The bailey is an enclosed courtyard, typically surrounded by a wooden fence and overlooked by the motte. A castle could have more than one bailey, sometimes an inner and an outer.
Motte-and-bailey castles could be very quickly erected; according to records, William the Conqueror built one at Pevensey in eight days. The rapidity and ease with which it was possible to construct castles of this type made them characteristic of the Norman Conquest period in England and of the Anglo-Norman settlements in Wales, Ireland and the Scottish lowlands. In later days a stone wall replaced the timber palisade and produced what is known as the shell-keep, the type met with in the castles of Berkeley, Alnwick and Windsor, still existing today. The remains of castle mottes can be found in many parts of Britiain today.
A description of this type of castle is given in the life of John, bishop of Terouanne (Ada Sanctorum, quoted by GT Clark, Medieval Mil. Architecture): "The rich and the noble of that region being much given to feuds and bloodshed, fortify themselves ... and by these strongholds subdue their equals and oppress their inferiors. They heap up a mound as high as they are able, and dig round it as broad a ditch as they can ... Round the summit of the mound they construct a palisade of timber to act as a wall. Inside the palisade they erect a house, or rather a citadel, which looks down on the whole neighbourhood". St John, bishop of Terouanne, died in 1130, and this castle of Merchem, built by a lord of the town many years before, may be taken as typical of the practice of the 11th century. But in addition to the mound, the citadel of the fortress, there was usually appended to it a bailey or basecourt (and sometimes two) of semilunar or horseshoe shape, so that the mound stood on the line of the enceinte.
External Links
- Castles of Britain
- Account of William the Conqueror's castle building
- Timeref
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Motte-and-bailey."
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Vegetable | Timber, forest; wood, woodlands; timberland; hurst, frith, holt, weald, park, chase, greenwood, brake, grove, copse, coppice, bocage, tope, clump of trees, thicket, spinet, spinney; underwood, brushwood; scrub; boscage, bosk, ceja, chaparal, motte.; arboretum . |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
Crosswords: MOTTE |
| Non-English Usage: "MOTTE" is also a word in the following languages with English translations in parentheses. French (chunkily, clot, clots, lump, sod), German (moth). |
| Domain | Usage | |
Movie/TV Titles | Eine Motte flog zum Licht (1915) Motte (1985) Kudre Motte (1977) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title |
Books |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Thumbnail | Description & Credit | Thumbnail | Description & Credit |
 | Mort De Masaccio. / Weber del. Lithog. de C. Motte. Credit: National Library of Medicine. |  | Vue du Bâtiment des Eaux minêrales / A.X. Leprince del. Litho. de C. Motte. Credit: National Library of Medicine. |
 | Le Mari Malade. / A. Maurin del. J.P. Quenot direx Lith. de C. Motte. Credit: National Library of Medicine. |  | La Consultation / Lithog: de C. Motte [after Ferdinand-Victor-Eugène Delacroix]. Credit: National Library of Medicine. |
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits. | |||
 |
| "Rocks" by Martin Manegold Commentary: "Person posing on the top of alot of Rocks. La Grande Motte, near Montpellier, Southern France." |
Source: photographs selected by the editor, with permission from the photographers. |
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Health | Billard C, Dulac O, Bouloche J, Echenne B, Lebon P, Motte J, Robain O, Santini JJ. Encephalopathy with calcifications of the basal ganglia in children. (references) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| "MOTTE" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 73.68% of the time. "MOTTE" is used about 19 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 73.68% | 14 | 93,893 |
| Noun (proper) | 26.32% | 5 | 157,705 |
| Total | 100.00% | 19 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
| The following table summarizes the usage of "MOTTE" based on a population census conducted in the United States. Ranks and frequencies are based on all names reported and classified. |
| Name | Usage/Gender | Usage per 100 million Persons | Rank in USA |
| Motte | Last name | 300 | 29,928 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits. | |||
Expressions using "MOTTE": De Motte ♦ Fort Motte ♦ Isle La Motte ♦ La Motte. Additional references. | |
| Hyphenated Usage | |
Beginning with "MOTTE": motte-and-bailey, Motte-bossut. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Language | Translations for "MOTTE"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Turkish | höyük (Barrow, burial mound, cairn, tumulus). (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "MOTTE": mottes. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "MOTTE" (pronounced mÄ"t) |
| 3 | m Ä" t | Mott. |
| 2 | -Ä" t | allot, baht, blot, Bott, bought, caught, clot, cot, Dot, forgot, got, hot, jot, khat, knot, lat, lot, Lotte, not, plot, pot, rot, scot, shot, Shott, slot, spot, squat, swat, tot, trot, Watt, yacht. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
Direct Anagrams: motet, totem. | |
| Words within the letters "e-m-o-t-t" | |
-1 letter: mote, mott, tome, tote. | |
-2 letters: met, mot, tet, toe, tom, tot. | |
-3 letters: em, et, me, mo, oe, om, to. | |
| Words containing the letters "e-m-o-t-t" | |
+1 letter: motets, mottes, mottle, totems. | |
+2 letters: matelot, mofette, mostest, mottled, mottler, mottles, mottoes, mozetta, mozette, omitted, omitter, stomate, tetotum, timeout, tomenta, torment, totemic. | |
+3 letters: amaretto, amoretti, amoretto, automate, bottomed, bottomer, contempt, demotist, hemostat, impotent, leftmost, matelote, matelots, mofettes, moffette, moistest, monteith, moquette, mostests, mothiest, motivate, motliest, mottlers, mozettas, mozzetta, mozzette, ofttimes, ointment, omelette, omitters, palmetto, remittor, remotest, roomette, stomates, tautomer, teetotum, tenotomy, teratoma, tetotums, timeouts, titmouse, tomatoes, tomatoey, tomentum, torments, totemism, totemist, totemite, westmost. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Crosswords 3. Usage: Modern 4. Usage: Commercial | 5. Images: Photo Album 6. Images: Digital Art 7. Quotations: Non-fiction 8. Usage Frequency | 9. Names: Frequency 10. Expressions 11. Expressions: Internet 12. Translations: Modern | 13. Derivations 14. Rhymes 15. Anagrams 16. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.