Etymology

mallet

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Today it means: A type of hammer with a larger-than-usual head made of wood, rubber or similar non-iron material, used by woodworkers for driving a tool, such as a chisel. A kind of maul. Full definition →

Middle English maylet ← Old French maillet ← Latin malleum
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mallet · noun, verb1

  1. Proto-Indo-European*melh₂-?
  2. Proto-Indo-European*mer-?
  3. Proto-Indo-European*merh₂-?
  4. Latinmalleum
  5. Old Frenchmail
  6. Old Frenchmaillet
  7. Middle Englishmaylet
  8. English todaymallet

Inherited from Middle English maylet, borrowed from Old French maillet, from mail + -et.

Mallet · noun2

Derived from the name of the inventor, Swiss engineer Anatole Mallet.

Mallet · proper noun3

Cryptographic scenarios use archetypal characters with standard names chosen to remember their role: Mallet was derived from "malicious" and "man-in-the-middle attack", as well as the tool mallet.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.