mangonel

noun

man·​go·​nel ˈmaŋ-gə-ˌnel 

: a military engine formerly used to throw missiles

Word History

Etymology

Middle English mangonel, mangnel, borrowed from Anglo-French mangunel, magnel, from mangun- (borrowed from Medieval Latin manganum, going back to Late Latin, "contrivance, apparatus," borrowed from Greek mánganon "charm meant to arouse passion," of uncertain origin) + -el, diminutive suffix, going back to Latin -ellus, originally forming diminutives from stems ending in -ul-, -r-, -n-

Note: Greek mánganon is attested relatively late, probably first in the sense "love charm," then in more concrete senses: "military engine" (mánganon polemikón), block of a pulley, iron bolt." Derivatives of mánganon, however, appear earlier, as manganeía "magic, trickery," attested in Plato, and manganeúein "to practice sorcery," attested in Aristophanes. R. Beekes (Etymological Dictionary of Greek) suggests a connection between mánganon and mēchanḗ (Doric māchanā) "device (as a hoist for lifting stones), siege engine, contrivance, scheme, means, remedy" (see machine entry 1), with which there is semantic commonality. The words share phonetic fluctuations that characterize a substratal language called "Pre-Greek" by Beekes: 1) variation in vowel length, here between a and ā, as Pre-Greek lacked a vowel length distinction; 2) variation in stops, here between g [γ] and ch [χ], as Pre-Greek had only a single stop series; 3) variation in pre-consonantal nasals, here between -ng- [-γγ-] and -ch- [-χ-], as Pre-Greek had prenasalized stops, which were variably maintained in borrowing (as nasal-stop clusters). The non-Indo-European affiliation of mēchanḗ, however, has not been generally accepted—see note at machine entry 1.

First Known Use

13th century, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for mangonel

• atonal
• coronal
• hormonal
• umbonal
• veronal
• clonal
• sonal
• tonal
• zonal
• embryonal
• monoclonal
• polyclonal