[et.y.mon] n, pl -ma also -mons [L, fr. Gk, literal meaning of a word according to its origin, fr. etymos true; akin to Gk eteos true--more at sooth] (ca. 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