moder, modere, to moderate, restrain. Caxton, Hist. Troye, leaf 6, back, 18; Sir T. More, Works, p. 882, col. 2. OF. moderer.
modern, ordinary, commonplace, common; in a depreciatory sense. As You Like It, ii. 7. 156; Macbeth, iv. 3. 170. The only Shakespearian sense; peculiarly Elizabethan.
moe; see [mo].
moil, moyle, a ‘mule’. Ford, Fancies, ii. 2; More’s Utopia (ed. Lumby, 51); Beaumont and Fl., Scornful Lady, ii. 1 (Welford). Common in Devon and Cornwall, see EDD. (s.v. Moyle).
moil, moyle, a kind of slipper or shoe; ‘Moyles of velvet to save thy shooes of lether’, J. Heywood, Prov. and Epigr. (ed. 1867, 214); ‘Moiles, a kind of high-soled shoes, worn in ancient times by Kings and great Persons’, Phillips; spelt mule, ‘He had ane pair of mules on his feit’, Spalding, Troubles of Charles I (NED.). F. mules, ‘moyles, pantofles, high slippers’ (Cotgr.). Cp. Du. muylen, pantoffles (Hexham). Med. L. mula, ‘crepida’ (Ducange).
moil, moyle, to wet; to soil, make dirty. Turbervile, Hunting, 33; to defile, Spenser, Hymn Heavenly Love, 220; to toil, work hard, drudge, Bacon, Essay, Plantations; to weary, fatigue, harass, Stanyhurst, tr. Aeneid, i (ed. Arber, 27). In common prov. use in many senses, to plaster with mud, to soil, defile, to work hard, to worry, see EDD. (s.v. Moil, vb.). F. mouiller (Cotgr.).
mold, a ‘mole’, spot, blemish. Spenser, F. Q. vi. 12. 7. See [mould].
mollipuff; see [mullipuff].
mome, a blockhead. Com. Errors, iii. 1. 32; Spenser, F. Q. vi. 7. 49; Levins, Manipulus; Drayton, Skeltoniad, p. 1373; Mirror for Mag. 466; Dekker, Gull’s Horne-bk. 5; Heywood, Rape of Lucrece, i. 2. 5. Dialect of Geneva mome, ‘sot, nigaud’; cp. F. (argot) mome, ‘garçon’ (Sainéan, p. 206).
†Momtanish (?); ‘And this your momtanish inhumanytye’, Sir T. More, ii. 4. 162. Dr. H. Bradley conjectures Moritanish (i.e. Moorish).