this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2024
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Mildly Interesting

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Bought a new pack of a hair product which now uses 6% less natural ingredients and is no longer vegan (lemmy.zip)
submitted 5 months ago by Blizzard@lemmy.zip to c/mildlyinteresting@lemmy.world
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[–] force@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

The American spelling "matte" probably comes from the spelling "mate" derived from French "mate", and doubling the "t" to differentiate it from "mate". The British spelling "matt" was probably primarily influenced by the German word "Matt" considering the UK tended to have more German influence.

Alternatively, either (or both) may be an etymological spelling from Latin "mattus" (which means "drunk" but likely became a word for "pale" in French).

While I am a linguist, I only deduced this from a bit of Googling and a lot of speculating, so don't take my word for it...