The Etymology of Marble
Marble entered Middle English around 1200 from Old French marbre, descended cleanly from Latin marmor and ultimately from Greek marmaros, "shining stone", a derivative of the verb marmairein, to flash or sparkle. The Greeks named the stone for its luminous appearance — the way polished marble catches and scatters light — rather than for its hardness or grain. Roman builders inherited both the word and the love of the material; Carrara, Pentelikon, Paros, and Numidian marbles were imperial luxuries traded across the Mediterranean. English marble began as a building and sculpture term and only gradually broadened. The toy-marble sense — small spheres of stone, glass, or clay used in children’s games — is recorded from 1690s, named after the marble-stone from which the costlier examples were once cut. The medical phrase "to lose one’s marbles", meaning to become forgetful, dates from American English of the early twentieth century.