| 释义 |
-mascomb. form Primary stress is retained by the usual stressed syllable of the preceding element and vowels may be reduced accordingly; see e.g. Roodmas n.Origin: A variant or alteration of another lexical item. Etymon: mass n.1 Etymology: < mass n.1Compounds with mass n.1 as the terminal element are recorded from the Old English period onwards, e.g. Childermas n., Christmas n.1 and int., Martinmas n., Michaelmas n., Petermas n. In the early uses the second element remains as a full word; its reduction in the written form to an ending -mas or -mes is first exemplified in late Middle English. New compounds continue to be attested from late Middle English into early modern English: e.g. Ellenmas n., Hallowmas n., Uphalimass n. at Uphaliday n. Derivatives. Thereafter newly attested compounds are rare. mass n.1 as the second element in compounds occurs both with the sense ‘a (celebration of the) mass (of a kind specified by the first element)’ and with the sense ‘the festival of (the person or thing denoted by the first element)’. In the former use the second element is only rarely reduced to an unstressed combining form; in the latter there is a certain amount of free variation between a full compound and one with the reduced second element: compare Marymass n., soul mass n., with senses and forms of both kinds. A number of such compounds whose first element is a personal name were originally formed with the genitive in -s (Old English -es ); this is occasionally preserved, e.g. in Lukesmas n. A few compounds have an initial element that does not denote a person or persons, e.g. Candlemas n., Crouchmas n., Lammas n. This is a new entry (OED Third Edition, December 2000; most recently modified version published online December 2020). <  comb. form |