mansion

Mansion is the French middle rung of the ladder house, mansion, domicile. English took it in the mid-1300s from Old French mansion, from Latin mansionem, "a staying, a remaining, night quarters," from manere, "to stay, abide" — the same root as permanent and remain.

The original sense had nothing to do with grandeur; it meant a stopping-place. In Middle English a mansion could be a stage of a journey, which is probably how the word acquired its astrological sense of a temporary home for a planet. It meant the chief residence of a lord from the mid-1300s, and only from the 1510s did it become any large and stately house. The drift from "a place where you stop for the night" to "a very big house" happened because the lord's chief residence was, in the first instance, simply the one he stayed in.

mansion
(n.)
mid-14c.,
mansioun
, "chief residence of a lord," from Old French
mansion
"stay, permanent abode, house, habitation, home; mansion; state, situation" (13c.), from Latin
mansionem
(nominative
mansio
) "a staying, a remaining, night quarters, station," noun of action from past-participle stem of
manere
"to stay, abide" (from PIE root
*men-
(3)  "to remain").
The sense of "any large and stately house" is from 1510s. The word also was used in Middle English as "a stop or stage of a journey," hence probably astrological sense "temporary home" (late 14c.).
also from mid-14c.

← look up another word