M
M
M IN PRINT AND PROVERB
1. (phrase) To have an M under one’s girdle means to
show courtesy by using the title Mr., Mrs., or Miss.
2. (in literature)
“The letter m in the word am means
I; so that in the expression I am, a superfl uous and
useless rudiment has been retained.”
—Charles
Darwin, The Descent of Man
3. (in literature) “M is a mountain or a camp with
tents pitched in pairs.”
—Victor Hugo, quoted in
ABZ by Mel Gooding
4. n. In printing, a pica or unit of measure (“em” space).
5. n. A written representation of the letter.
Through one street and the next, until she’d come
upon the red M of a Metro station. Descending, she’d
purchased, with too large a bill and some diffi culty,
tokens of what appeared to be luminous plastic, the
color of glow- in- the- dark toy skeletons, each with its
own iconic M. —William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
[The curve of the handwritten line,] galloping like
the wind, cutting across itself, soars up to the sky, so
that it can start turning into the letter M. —Peter
Esterhazy, Celestial Harmonies: A Novel
6. n.
A device, such as a printer’s type, for reproduc -
ing the letter.
CLASSIFICATIONS AND DESIGNATIONS

7. n. Classification of a rifl e, as in M- 1 and M- 16.
Do you wonder why that rifle/Is hanging in my
den?/You know I rarely take it down/But I touch it
now and then./It’s rather slow and heavy/By stan
-
dards of today/But not too many years ago/It swept
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the rest away./It’s held its own in battles/Through
snow, or rain, or sun/And I had one just like it,/This
treasured old M- 1. —R. A. Gannon, “M- 1”
8. n.
Something arbitrarily designated M (e.g., a per-
son, place, or other thing).
[In response to a blind taste test conducted by Pepsi,
in which people were asked to choose between two
products labeled Q and M, the Coca- Cola Company]
churned out a bewildering set of statements and
commercials aimed at disparaging Pepsi’s results,
starting with the claim that people had a psycho
-
logical preference for the letter M over the letter
Q, unfairly skewing the outcome [in Pepsi’s favor].
Pepsi . . . hit back immediately with a new set of taste
tests using the letters L and S that also detected a
preference for Pepsi. Coca- Cola answered that salvo
with a faux- comic spot in which people explained
why they liked the letter L better than the letter S.
—Frederick L. Allen, Secret Formula
9. n. Someone called M.

[I am psychically picking up on] the letter M. It’s
very strong in this room
. . . . You have helped me
before; I need your help now, M. M, come to me. I will
aid you in your fight against the spirit you oppose.
But you must tell me where to look. Are you trying to
reach me, M? —Dark Shadows, Episode 648
Yet Leonardo must have hoped that . . . some objec
-
tive observer would one day seize on the image of
this mysterious woman linked with the letter “M”
and ask the obvious questions. Who was this “M”
and why was she so important? —Lynn Picknett,
The Templar Revelation: Secret Guardians of the
True Identity of Christ
10. n.
The thirteenth in a series.
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11. n. The Millennium Hotel in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
The M has several spaces for comfy socializing.
—Davey Snyder, quoted in NeilGaiman.com
HEALTH ISSUES
12. n. An antigen of human blood responsible for the
production of antibodies.
The M antigen, and its antithetical partner, N,
were first detected using sera obtained from
rabbits immunized with human red cells.
—Immucor
13. n.

A vitamin (folic acid).
Folic acid is essential to many of the body’s enzyme
activities, including the synthesis of protein and
the genetic materials RNA and DNA. It also works
with vitamin B12 to produce red blood cells. Folic
acid may help prevent some cancers, heart disease,
and stroke. Adequate intake during pregnancy is
crucial, as folic acid appears to protect against
some birth defects
. . . . Rich sources of folic acid
include vegetables (particularly the dark- green
ones); organ meats, whole- wheat products, legumes,
and mushrooms. —American Medical Association
SCIENTIFIC MATTERS
14. n. A Roman numeral for 1,000.
15. n. With a line above it, a Roman numeral for
1,000,000.
16. n. A computer programming language.
M is a procedural, general purpose language with
well- developed database handling capabilities
. . . .
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[It has been theorized that] the choice of a single
letter [name] was to get a free ride from the popu
-
larity of C, a single letter compiler which is very
popular. —Chris Bonnici
17. n. (calculus)
The lower limit of summation.

18. n. (astronomy) A class of red stars.
[F]or red stars like Betelgeuse, we use the letter M.
—Dennis Richard Danielson, The Book of the Cosmos
CONTRACTION ’M
19. v. Am. I’m going.
20. pronoun.
Him. Give ’m the whole story.
21. n.
Madam. Yes ’m.
MISCELLANEOUS
22. n. Any spoken sound represented by the letter.
The sound vibration of the consonant M means
“to bring forth, manifesting, matter.” —Joseph E.
Rael, Tracks of Dancing Light: A Native American
Approach to Understanding Your Name
23. n.
The thirteenth letter of the alphabet.
“They drew all manner of things—everything that
begins with an M.”
“Why with an M?” said Alice.
“Why not?” said the March Hare. —Lewis Carroll,
Alice in Wonderland
Big guy, looks . . . what’s the word. Begins with an M.
—Neil Gaiman, American Gods
Two massive columns supported a lintel that dipped
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in the center to a sharp point, giving the whole
monument the shape of a gigantic letter “M.” —Stan
McDaniel, The Letterseeker

[K]illing some hours by circling in blue ball- point
ink every uppercase M in the front section of a
month- old New York Times. —Jonathan Franzen,
The Corrections
24. n.
Something having the shape of an M.
Breakfast time is his time for sitting atop that
spherical white buoy . . . his wings held in the shape
of an M. —William Calvin, The Cerebral Symphony
The slope was so sheer it hid the M- stone as if it had
never existed, and the glare from the sun fl ashed off
the wet surface like a mirror. —Stan McDaniel,
The Letterseeker
Both orbital rims and brow ridges are oblique in
such a way as to describe a stretched- out letter
M above the eyes. —Stephen Rogers Peck, Atlas of
Human Anatomy for the Artist
25. n.
The thirteenth section in a piece of music.
26. n. M roof: a double- peaked roof.
27. n.
Deep dreamless sleep.
M [of the sacred Hindu syllable AUM] is of Deep
Dreamless Sleep, where (as we say) we have “lost”
consciousness, and the mind (as described in the
Indian texts) is “an undifferentiated mass or con
-
tinuum of consciousness unqualified,” lost in dark-
ness. —Joseph Campbell, The Mythic Image
M

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