Etymology: Probably < Anglo-Norman mazer, mazere, mazre, macere, maser, masre, madre maple (the wood and the tree), mazer, goblet, drinking bowl (end of 12th cent.) and Old French mazre, masdre, madre wood with veined grain used for making vessels, vessel made of this, maple (also end of 12th cent.; Middle French, French madre ; compare post-classical Latin mazer , earlier masarus maple wood (9th cent. in a French charter; in various forms in British sources from 13th cent.), drinking vessel (in various forms in British sources from 1300)) < a form in a Germanic language cognate with Middle Dutch māser knot or swelling of a tree, especially a maple, Old Saxon masur swelling (Middle Low German māser curly-grained wood, also glossing post-classical Latin murra maple), Old High German masar knot or swelling of a tree (glossing Latin tuber , nodus ; Middle High German maser curly-grained wood, excrescence on the maple and other trees, drinking cup made of curly-grained wood, German Maser curl in grain of wood), Old Icelandic mǫsurr maple tree, veined wood, Swedish masur curly-grained wood (compare masur n.); probably ultimately from the same base are mase n. and measles n.; compare also maple tree n. and discussion at that entry. Compare also Norwegian regional (perhaps archaic) masa to paint with a pattern of flames or with curving stripes, Danish mase veining in wood (probably < Middle Low German).The word may have existed already in Old English: Maserfelth , the site of a battle mentioned in Bede (Maserfeld in the Old English translation; doubtfully—but at an early date already—identified with Oswestry in Shropshire), may perhaps show the noun as its first element, and a corrupt form of a derived adjective *mæseren may perhaps be shown by the following (although others suggest instead a connection with maslin n.¹):OE Rec. Gifts of Bp. Leofric to Exeter Cathedral (Bodl.) in A. J. Robertson Anglo-Saxon Charters (1956) 226 VI mæsene sceala. With this perhaps compare Old Icelandic mǫsurr skál maplewood vessel, found in church inventories. The statement in N.E.D. (1906) that Welsh masarn , in the sense ‘maple, sycamore’ (1425) is ‘certainly’ a loan < English overstates the case somewhat (it is at least as likely that it was borrowed directly < French), and the existence of a Welsh example from c1300 in this sense cannot therefore be reliably used as the basis for concluding that sense 1b might have been more common in Middle English than the surviving evidence suggests.

Etymology: < maze v. + -er suffix¹.

Etymology: < mazer n.¹ Compare mazard v.