From Anglo-Norman French 'musherun,' from Old French 'moisseron' — of uncertain ultimate origin.
A fleshy, spore-bearing fruiting body of a fungus, typically produced above ground, with a dome-shaped cap on a stalk.
From Old French mousseron or moiseron (a type of edible fungus), of uncertain ultimate origin. The most accepted etymology derives it from mousse (moss), suggesting the mushroom as a moss-dwelling or moss-resembling plant, with mousse itself from Frankish *mosa (bog, marsh), related to Old English mos (bog, marsh) and ultimately to PIE *meus- (wet, moss). An alternative traces it to Late Latin mussirionem (accusative of mussirio), recorded in Vulgar Latin, which may itself be a borrowing from a pre-Roman Gaulish substrate word. English borrowed the French term, replacing the native Old English words swamm and fungus (the latter
The English word 'toadstool' — used for inedible or poisonous mushrooms — literally means 'toad's stool,' from the folk belief that toads sat on mushrooms. But the older English word for mushroom, before the French borrowing arrived, was a variety of Germanic forms including 'paddock-stool' — where 'paddock' meant 'toad.' So 'toadstool' is actually a calque (loan translation) replacing the native term with the same