mention

English

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

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

Noun

mention (plural mentions)

A speaking or notice of anything, usually in a brief or cursory manner. Used especially in the phrase make mention of.
- 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Psalms 71:16:
  I will make mention of thy righteousness.
- 1613 (date written), William Shakespeare, [John Fletcher], “The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eight”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene ii]:
  And sleep in dull, cold marble, where no mention / Of me more must be heard of.
(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

Translations

a speaking or notice of anything, usually in a brief or cursory manner

Arabic: ذِكْر (ar) m (ḏikr)
Moroccan Arabic: هدرة
Bulgarian: спомена́ване n (spomenávane)
Catalan: menció f, esment (ca) m
Cebuano: hisgot
Chinese:
Mandarin: 言及 (zh) (yánjí), 提到 (zh) (tídào)
Czech: zmínka f
Danish: please add this translation if you can
Dutch: vermelding (nl) f
Esperanto: mencio
Finnish: maininta (fi)
German: Erwähnung (de) f
Greek: αναφορά (el) f (anaforá), μνεία (el) f (mneía), μνημόνευση (el) f (mnimónefsi)
Hindi: ज़िक्र m (zikr)
Icelandic: umtal n
Italian: cenno (it) m, accenno (it) m, menzione (it) f
Japanese: 言及 (ja) (げんきゅう, genkyū)
Korean: 언급(言及) (ko) (eon'geup)
Latin: mentiō f
Macedonian: спомнување n (spomnuvanje), напомена f (napomena), споменување n (spomenuvanje)
Old English: ymbsprǣc n
Polish: wzmianka (pl) f
Portuguese: menção f
Russian: упомина́ние (ru) n (upominánije), ссы́лка (ru) f (ssýlka)
Scottish Gaelic: iomradh m, luaidh m
Serbo-Croatian:
Cyrillic: помен f, помињање n

Latin: pomen (sh) f, pominjanje n
Sicilian: mintuvari (scn), ammintuvari (scn), ammuntuari (scn)
Spanish: mención (es) f, minción f
Swedish: omnämnande (sv) n
Tagalog: banggit, ungkat (tl)
Thai: please add this translation if you can
Ukrainian: посила́ння (uk) n (posylánnja), зга́дка f (zhádka)
Vietnamese: đề cập (vi)

Verb

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

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”.
(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.