mott

• motte

Probably ultimately from French motte; compare motte.

mott (plural motts)

1. (US, chiefly Texas) A copse or small grove of trees, especially live oak or elm. [from 19th c.]
   • about 1900, O. Henry, Hygeia at the Solito

     They were rolling southward on the International. The timber was huddling into little, dense green motts at rare distances before the inundation of the downright, vert prairies. This was the land of the ranches; the domain of the kings of the kine.

   • 2013, Philipp Meyer, The Son, Simon & Schuster 2014, p. 39:

     We continued northwest, the grass tall with scattered thick motts of oak and the mesquites with their flickering leaves and the yuccas in bloom with their white flowers.

See mort (“woman”), etymology 5.

mott (plural motts)

1. Alternative spelling of mot (“woman”)
   • c. 1821, Egan, Pierce, Real Life in London‎, page 223:

     The Hon. TOM DASHALL in the mean time was in close conversation with his mott in the corner of the Box, and was getting, as Sparkle observed, "rather nutty in that quarter of the globe."