English
millet
Millet comes from Middle French millet, and goes back to Proto-Indo-European *melh₂- ‘to grind, crush’.
- Proto-Indo-Europeanc. 4500–2500 BCE*melh₂-1‘to grind, crush’reconstructed
- Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEmilium1
- Middle Frenchc. 1400–1600millet1
- Englishearliest quotation 1991millet1
attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor
- 1 Wiktionary, English millet
- Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1991, Douglas Coupland, Adventure without risk is Disneyland: “[…] Tobias said, ‘Don't bother. Elena's allergic to all…”.
Lineage
- Proto-Indo-Europeanc. 4500–2500 BCE*melh₂-Wiktionary, English millet‘to grind, crush’reconstructed
- Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEmiliumWiktionary, English millet
- Middle Frenchc. 1400–1600milletWiktionary, English millet
- Englishearliest quotation 1991milletWiktionary, English millet. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1991, Douglas Coupland, Adventure without risk is Disneyland: “[…] Tobias said, ‘Don't bother. Elena's allergic to all…”
The story
Not related to مِلَّة (milla).
Linked words
through Proto-Indo-European *melh₂- ‘to grind, crush’
meal, mold, mild, mould, mole, camo, mule, bonanza, molar, melatonin, amalgam, muller, moulin, maelstrom, mull, martel, moline, malleable, malm, amyl, 41 more
Another origin of millet
- Arabicc. 500–presentمِلَّةmilla‘ideological or religious community, philosophy, creed, weltanschauung, religion’
- Ottoman Turkishc. 1300–1928ملتmillet‘people, nation, a historically constituted, stable community of people’
- Englishtodaymillet
Today it means
noun Any of a group of various types of grass or its grains used as food, widely cultivated in the developing world.
Sources
Sources: Wiktionary, “millet”. 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 / Proto-Indo-European *melh₂- / millet