# mason

Pronunciation: say "MAY-suhn" /ˈmeɪsən/

## Noun

1. A person whose job is building with stone or brick.
   - Simple: A worker who builds things with stone or bricks.
   - _A skilled mason repointed the crumbling brickwork on the front of the house._
   - _Masons laid the foundation before the carpenters arrived to frame the walls._
2. A member of the fraternal order of Freemasons.
   - Simple: A member of a group called the Freemasons.
   - _He became a mason in his twenties and later served as master of his lodge._
   - _Several of the town's leading merchants were masons and met at the lodge on Thursday nights._
3. A person who prepares stone so that it is ready for use in building.
   - Simple: A worker who gets stone ready to be used for building.
   - _In the yard beside the cathedral, a mason chiseled a block of limestone into a window arch._
   - _The masons dressed every stone at the quarry before it was hauled to the site._

## Verb

4. To build stonework or brickwork around, under, in, or over something, or to construct something in masonry.
   - Simple: To build stone or brick walls around, under, or over something.
   - _The builders masoned in the furnace, leaving only a small door for the fuel._
   - _Before the spring rains, they plan to mason up the bank along the creek with fieldstone._

## Origin

From Middle English masoun, machun, from Anglo-Norman machun, masson and Old French maçon, from Late Latin maciō (“carpenter, bricklayer”). The Latin word comes from Frankish *makjō (“maker, builder”), from *makōn (“to work, build, make”), from Proto-Indo-European *mag- (“to knead, mix, make”). It was blended with Proto-West Germanic *mattjō (“cutter”), from Proto-Indo-European *met- (“to cut”).

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/mason (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).