Meaning

noun a kind of pick that is used for digging; has a flat blade set at right angles to the handle

originFrom Middle English mattok (“mattock, pickaxe”), from Old English mattuc, meottoc, mettoc (“mattock, fork, trident”), from Proto-West Germanic *mattjuk (“mattock, ploughshare”), from Proto-Indo-European *met- (“to cut, reap”). Related to Old High German medela (“plough”), Middle High German metze, metz (“knife”), Latin mateola (“implement for digging in the soil”), Polish motyka (“hoe, mattock”),…

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0