mop: [15] Mop first appeared in the guise mappe, a late 15th-century sailors’ term for an improvised brush used for caulking ships’ seams with tar. The modern form mop, presumably the same word, did not emerge until the mid-17thcentury. It may be a truncation of an earlier mapple ‘mop’ [15], which came from late Latin mappula ‘towel, cloth’, a diminutive form of Latin mappa ‘cloth’ (source of English map). => map
mop (n.)
late 15c., mappe "bundle of yarn, etc., fastened to the end of a stick for cleaning or spreading pitch on a ship's decks," from Walloon (French) mappe "napkin," from Latin mappa "napkin" (see map (n.)). Modern spelling by 1660s. Of hair, from 1847. Grose ["Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue," Grose, 1788] has mopsqueezer "A maid servant, particularly a housemaid."
