2871: Mason Oct 31, 2024

If you hear the word ‘mason’ now, this is going to specifically relate to someone who works with stone, but there’s also the word ‘stonemason’ which would be redundant if that were completely true, as for instance no one refers to ‘wood carpenters’. You might think this is to distinguish from a bricklayer, who is also a mason, but deals not with stone, bricks being baked clay. Rather, it’s due to the word’s semantic narrowing over many centuries, having once denoted anyone involved in building a house, including carpenters. Just take a look at the surname of zoologist, James Wood-Mason. 

‘Mason’ is not related to the French ‘maison’ meaning ‘house’ nor of course by extension the English word ‘mansion’, the middle-N of which is actually more authentic to the original Latin ‘mānsiōnem’ (dwelling). It is, however, distantly related to the word ‘make’; the word came to English through Norman French via Latin 'maciō (“carpenter, bricklayer”), hence why the C→ Ç→S, but that is from a Germanic origin related to ‘make’.