n.
Pronunciation: ' e-t ə - ˌ män
Function: noun
Inflected Form: plural -ma \ -m ə \ also -mons
Etymology: Latin, from Greek, literal meaning of a word according to its origin, from etymos true; akin to Greek eteos true ― more at SOOTH
Date: circa 1576
1 a : an earlier form of a word in the same language or an ancestral language b : a word in a foreign language that is the source of a particular loanword
2 : a word or morpheme from which words are formed by composition or derivation