From Latin 'momentum' (movement, decisive instant), from 'movere' (to move) — originally the weight that tips a balance.
A very brief period of time; importance or significance ('of great moment'); in physics, a turning effect produced by a force acting at a distance from a point.
From Old French 'moment,' from Latin 'mōmentum' (movement, moving power, a decisive instant, importance, an atom of time), a contraction of 'movimentum,' from 'movēre' (to move, to stir). The PIE root is *mewh₁- (to push away, to move). The Latin word originally meant 'the weight that tips a balance' — the tiny additional mass that decides which side
The three meanings of 'moment' — a brief time, importance, and a physics term for force — are all descended from the same Latin metaphor. 'Mōmentum' originally meant the tiny weight that tips a balance scale. From that image came: the decisive instant (the moment that tips the outcome), significance (a matter of great moment = great weight), and the physics concept (a turning