English
mesa
Mesa comes from Spanish mesa ‘table’, and goes back to Latin mēnsa.
- Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEmēnsa1‘a table’
- Late Latinmodernmēsa2
- Old Spanishc. 950–1500mesa2
- Spanishc. 1500–presentmesa1‘table’
- Englishearliest quotation 1895mesa1
attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor
- 1 Wiktionary, English mesa
- 2 Wiktionary, Spanish mesa
- Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1895, John Wesley Powell, Meadville: “Low mesas, dry, treeless, stretch back from the brink…”.
Earlier history uncertain. See Wiktionary.
Lineage
- Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEmēnsaWiktionary, English mesa‘a table’
- Late LatinmodernmēsaWiktionary, Spanish mesa
- Old Spanishc. 950–1500mesaWiktionary, Spanish mesa
- Spanishc. 1500–presentmesaWiktionary, English mesa‘table’
- Englishearliest quotation 1895mesaWiktionary, English mesa. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1895, John Wesley Powell, Meadville: “Low mesas, dry, treeless, stretch back from the brink…”
first attested First attested 1759, from Spanish mesa (“table”), from Latin mēnsa (as stated in Wiktionary’s etymology)
The story
First attested 1759, from Spanish mesa (‘table’), from Latin mēnsa.
Linked words
through Proto-Indo-European *meh₁- ‘to measure’
month, moon, moral, meal, sunny, meter, moody, metric, metre, meta, menstrual, asymmetry, madder, metrology, firman, mete, metis, metra, moodiness, menses, 62 more
through Proto-Italic *mētis
through Latin mētior ‘to measure’
measure, dimensional, dimension, commensurate, 19 more
through Latin mēnsus ‘measured’
through Latin mēnsa ‘a table’
Today it means
noun A flat area of land or plateau higher than other land, with one or more clifflike edges.
Sources
Sources: Wiktionary, “mesa”; the older steps come from the Wiktionary entry for Spanish mesa. By Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0, via kaikki.org (dump of Oct 3 2026); text adapted and restructured. Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word. License.
Etymograph / Latin mēnsa / mesa