motto

CEFRB2

/ˈmɑ.toʊ/

noun

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

01
noun
A short phrase expressing a person or group's beliefs.
02
noun
Extra detail
A sentence, phrase, or word, forming part of an heraldic achievement.

Examples

At a glance

Sits at B2 on the CEFR scale

Also pronounced

Deep Dive

Extra meanings

A personal slogan.
A sentence, phrase, or word, prefixed to an essay, discourse, chapter, canto, or the like, suggestive of its subject matter; a short, suggestive expression of a guiding principle; a maxim.
A paper packet containing a sweetmeat, cracker, etc., together with a scrap of paper bearing a motto.

In context

His motto is "Plain living and high thinking."
You have to be in it to win it — that's my motto.
It was the motto of a bishop eminent for his piety and good works, ... Serve God, and be cheerful.

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The word in print, with each source given in full.

‘Gentlemen, I can tell you what the new queen will take as her motto. It is Bound to Obey and Serve.’
2020, Hilary Mantel, The Mirror and the Light, Fourth Estate, page 10
It was the motto of a bishop eminent for his piety and good works, ... Serve God, and be cheerful.
1715 June 4 (Gregorian calendar), Joseph Addison, “The Free-holder: No. 45. Tuesday, May 25. [1715.]”, in The Works of the Right Honourable Joseph Addison, Esq; […], volume IV, Lo...
“[…] the awfully hearty sort of Christmas cards that people do send to other people that they don't know at all well. You know. The kind that have mottoes like Here's rattling good luck and roaring good cheer, / With lashings of food and great hogsheads of beer. […]”
1921, Ben Travers, chapter 1, in A Cuckoo in the Nest, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, published 1925, →OCLC
The singularity of his epigraphic strategy notwithstanding, Emerson does not draw attention to his own mottoing. One exchange suggests that his practice was a convention imposed from without.
2003, Nineteenth Century Prose, volume 30, page 304

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Borrowed from Italian motto (“a word, a saying”), from Latin muttum (“a mutter, a grunt”), late 16th c. Doublet of mot.