Other forms: mots
When you impress your friends with a witty observation or a funny quip, you use a mot. Your favorite teacher might be well known for her clever mots.
If someone uses the perfect word or puts things in a particularly amusing way, they're skilled with a mot — short for a bon mot, or a "good saying" or "good word" in French. Mot is used in French to mean a "remark" or "short speech," and it comes from the Latin root mutum, "mutter" or "grunt."