Do the phrases “muster up the courage” and “muster point” have much do to with one another? They do; and this of course raises the question: is “mustard” somehow involved in this relationship as well? It isn’t, but as some form of consolation, “monster,” at least, is.

The word “muster” can be traced back to Old French, where mostre signified “an examination or inspection,” and mostrer meant “to appear, show, or reveal”. (Montrer, currently.) So, a few hundred years back, the military began using “muster” when they talked about gathering the troops for inspection, and now we still use it when a fire drill happens and we are forced to stand outside in the snow for longer than we’d like.

A few hundred years down the road, “muster” got the figurative treatment, and started being used as “mustering up [something]”, with the sense of gathering or summoning, as in when a grade 4 student, with no sense of remorse, musters up the courage to pull the fire alarm during math class (and causes the entire student body to meet at the muster point, for example).

These Old French words, mostre and mostrer, stem further back to Latin, where monstrare meant “to show”. Its forerunner, monstrum, meant “an omen or sign”, which happens also to be the root of “monster”, something considered to be a sign or omen of something bad approaching, which seems like a fair assessment.

If there are more interesting details to add, I can’t muster the motivation to bother with them anyway, so that will have to do.