The word "motto" traces one of the more improbable semantic journeys in English: from a Latin word meaning "grunt" to the formal inscription on a coat of arms or the guiding principle of a nation. It arrived in English from Italian in the late 16th century, but its roots reach back to one of the humblest sounds in the Latin language.
The Italian word motto means "word, saying, sentence, witty remark." It descends from Late Latin muttum, which meant simply "a word" or "a grunt" — the smallest unit of speech, barely more than a noise. Muttum came from the Classical Latin verb muttire (or mutire), meaning "to mutter, to murmur, to make a low sound." The word is onomatopoetic: it imitates the sound of someone speaking under their breath, lips barely moving, producing more vibration than articulation.
This humble verb produced a surprisingly distinguished word family. Through French, muttire gave English "mutter" (via Old English or Middle Dutch) and "mutt" (a meaningless sound, later a mongrel dog — something of no account). More significantly, the Late Latin muttum became Old French mot, which is the standard modern French word for "word" — le mot juste means "the right word," and a bon mot is a witty saying. The French mot also gave English "mot" (a witty remark), the word puzzle "mot" (as in crosswords), and, through legal French, "moue" (a pouting grimace).
Italian took muttum in a slightly different direction. While it retained the basic sense of "word" and "saying," it developed a particular association with pithy, memorable phrases — the kind of thing worth inscribing. By the Renaissance, motto was the standard Italian term for a maxim, an epigram, or the inscription accompanying an impresa (a personal emblem combining image and text, a predecessor of the corporate logo).
English borrowed motto in 1589, initially in the context of heraldry. In the system of heraldic achievement — the full display of a coat of arms — the motto is typically inscribed on a ribbon (called a scroll or banderole) below the shield. Heraldic mottoes were often war cries or statements of family principle: the British Royal Family's "Dieu et mon droit" ("God and my right"), the Order of the Garter's "Honi soit qui mal y pense" ("Shame on him who thinks evil of it"), and countless clan and family mottoes.
The word expanded beyond heraldry to cover any guiding phrase or principle. States and nations adopted mottoes: the United States' "E pluribus unum" ("Out of many, one"), France's "Liberté, égalité, fraternité," and the United Kingdom's royal motto. Schools, universities, corporations, and organizations followed suit. The motto became a compressed statement of identity — a handful of words meant to capture the essence of an entire institution.
The semantic distance between muttire and a national motto is vast: from an inarticulate grunt to the most deliberate, carefully chosen words an institution can produce. Yet the journey makes a kind of sense. A motto is, in essence, the one word or phrase that matters — the single utterance distilled from all possible utterances. The Latin speakers who named a grunt muttum and an utterance muttum were recognizing