mot

Mot is masculine because it derives from the Latin "muttum" (a grunt or mutter), which was a neuter noun in Latin. When French evolved from Latin, neuter nouns were generally reassigned to either masculine or feminine gender. In the case of "mot," the neuter Latin "muttum" was reassigned to the masculine gender, following the common pattern where many Latin neuter nouns became masculine in French, though this reassignment was not always predictable and often depended on the phonetic form of the word.