mortar
Definitions
General English
- noun a bowl for crushing things with a pestle
General Science
- noun a mixture of sand, cement and water, used to bind bricks together when building a wall
Construction
- A plastic mixture used in masonry construction that can be troweled and hardens in place. The most common materials that mortar may contain are Portland, hydraulic, or mortar cement, lime, fine aggregate, and water.
- The mixture of cement paste and fine aggregate that fills the voids between the coarse aggregate in fresh concrete.
Food
Military
- noun a simple indirect fire weapon, which is designed to fire projectiles at very high trajectories
- verb to fire at a target with a mortar
Real Estate
- noun a mixture of sand, water and cement or lime that becomes hard like stone, used in building to hold bricks and stones together
Origin & History of “mortar”
Latin mortārium, a word of unknown origin, denoted both a ‘bowl for grinding’ and, by extension, the ‘substance made in such a bowl’. these twin meanings survived through Anglo-Norman morter into modern English mortar as the ‘bowl used with a pestle’ and a ‘building mixture of cement, sand, and water’. The shape of the former led in the 17th century to the word’s application to a ‘short cannon’. The use of mortarboard for a ‘square flat academic cap’ dates from the mid-19th century.
