mould [ME] The root of mould ‘a hollow container used to give shape to hot material when it cools’ is Latin modulus, source of model [L16th] and module [L16th]. The mould that is a furry growth of fungi is unconnected, and came from a Scandinavian word into Late Middle English. The origins of the expression to break the mould, ‘to change to a markedly different way of doing things’, comes from the manufacture of objects cast in moulds. Destroying a mould afterwards ensured that no further copies could be made. The phrase dates from the 1560s and probably comes from a translation of the Italian epic poem Orlando Furioso, written by Ludovico Ariosto in 1532: ‘Nature made him and then broke the mould.’ Mould in the sense ‘earth’ as in leaf mould is a Germanic word found in Old English (see mole).