English

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Etymology

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Inherited from Middle English mencioun, mention, from Old French mention, from Latin mentiōnem, accusative of mentiō (a mention, calling to mind).

Pronunciation

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  • IPA(key): /ˈmɛnʃən/
  • Audio (US):(file)
  • Hyphenation: men‧tion
  • Rhymes: -ɛnʃən

Noun

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mention (plural mentions)

  1. A speaking or notice of anything, usually in a brief or cursory manner. Used especially in the phrase make mention of.
  2. (Internet, plural only) A social media feed, a list of replies or posts mentioning a person.
    • 2012 November 20, Kavitha Rao, “The Problems With Policing Sexism on Twitter”, in The Atlantic:
      "I would like Twitter to put some kind of filters in place," suggests Prakash. "At present I can't see troll tweets if I block the user, but others who go into my 'mentions' can do so, and read the graphic abuse, which is disturbing."
    • 2017 March 28, Jaleesa M. Jones, “Time to update your resumes: Chance the Rapper is hiring an intern”, in USA Today:
      In response to the flood of replies, Chance returned to Twitter several hours later — presumably, after his mentions calmed down — to request that users format their resumes as "creative decks, pitches or proposals" [] .
    • 2018 December 3, Bari Weiss, Eve Peyser, “Can You Like the Person You Love to Hate?”, in The New York Times:
      I didn’t delete my account — yet! I know! I am full of shame! — but I did change the way I use it (no looking at my mentions; far less tweeting; aiming to highlight the work of people I like rather than criticize the work of those I don’t).

Derived terms

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Translations

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Verb

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mention (third-person singular simple present mentions, present participle mentioning, simple past and past participle mentioned)

  1. To make a short reference to something.
    • 2013 June 1, “End of the peer show”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8838, page 71:
      Finance is seldom romantic. But the idea of peer-to-peer lending comes close. This is an industry that brings together individual savers and lenders on online platforms. [] Banks and credit-card firms are kept out of the picture. Talk to enough people in the field and someone is bound to mention the “democratisation of finance”.
  2. (philosophy, linguistics) To utter a word or expression in order to refer to the expression itself, as opposed to its usual referent.
    • 2006, Tony Evans, The Transforming Word: Discovering the Power and Provision of the Bible, Moody Publishers, →ISBN, page 140:
      I can illustrate this by mentioning the word lead. Now you have no way of knowing for sure which meaning I have in mind until I give it some context by using it in a sentence.
    • 2009, Lieven Vandelanotte, Speech and Thought Representation in English: A Cognitive-functional Approach, Walter de Gruyter, →ISBN, page 124:
      If the verbatimness view derives from the popular notion that DST repeats 'the actual words spoken', a second line of thought takes its cue from Quine's (1940: 23–26, 1960: 146–156) philosophical distinction between words which are “used” vs. words which are merely “mentioned”.
    • 2013, Richard Hanley, South Park and Philosophy: Bigger, Longer, and More Penetrating, Open Court, →ISBN:
      If I said rightly, “'Niggers' is a seven letter word,” I would be mentioning the word, and when we write it, we use mention-quotes for this purpose (speech typically lacks quotes, except for the occasional air-quotes). If I said, rightly or wrongly, “Niggers are good athletes,” then I would be using “niggers,” not merely mentioning it.

Synonyms

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(make a short reference to something): See Thesaurus:mention

Derived terms

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Translations

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Anagrams

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French

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Etymology

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Borrowed from Latin mentiōnem.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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mention f (plural mentions)

  1. mention (act of mentioning)
  2. slogan

Derived terms

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Further reading

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Old French

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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Borrowed from Latin mentiōnis, mentiōnis.

Noun

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mention oblique singularf (oblique plural mentions, nominative singular mention, nominative plural mentions)

  1. mention (act of mentioning)

See also

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