Maze or Labyrinth?

Around 1350 BCE, fire destroyed the Palace of Knossoss—also known as the Palace of Minos, the same man whose name has been immortalized in the Minoan civilization. Knossos, an ancient site on Crete, is the foremost Minoan settlement, having been occupied as early as the Neolithic Period. The fire may have destroyed the palace, but it baked the unfired clay of the palace well enough for them to survive three and a half millennia underground. One of these tablets, catalogued as KN Gg 702, is an accounting record. In Anna Judson’s translation, the first line reads as “to all the gods: honey: 1 jar” (Judson). The second line measures another jar. This one is for a figure the scribe calls da-pu₂-ri-to-jo po-ti-ni-ja, which is read as the Mistress of the Labyrinth. One jar is given to every god of Knossos, but the Mistress alone receives a singular jar.

This second line contains the oldest surviving form of the word “labyrinth,” written on the tablet in Linear B. The Mycenaean scribes wrote da-pu₂-ri-to, with an initial d. But in Classical Antiquity, the Greeks said labúrinthos. The difference in initials is odd, but linguists attribute this sound shift to a linguistic phenomenon known as lambdacism, aptly named after the Greek letter lambda. Additionally, the pu₂ would be pronounced somewhat like a bu, which explains the stark written difference in that second syllable. And the -inthos is shared by Korinthos and hyakinthos, words for a place and flower that predate Classical Greek. English adopted the word around 1400 CE, getting it from the Latin form labyrinthus which meant a great building with lots of snaking corridors.

On the other hand, maze has a less rich etymological history. It began as a feeling rather than a place. Around 1300 CE it meant “delusion, bewilderment, or confusion of thought” possibly from the unrecorded Old English word mæs. This is suggested by the verb amasian, which meant “to confuse.” Amasian is also the root of amaze. The meaning of a “baffling network of paths” is only recorded from the late 1300s.

The words converged on the same meaning. By Chaucer’s time, these two words served virtually the same function in the English language. They were generally synonymous. Ancient imagery confused people further: Greek coins and art would depict the mythological labyrinth as a single non-branching path. But the story logically requires a branching maze for the Minotaur to be trapped. 

So, modern scholars separate the terms by structure. In terms of path type, a maze is multicursal, which means it branches out with choices as to path and direction. Conversely, a labyrinth is unicursal, with a single path to the center. Someone exploring a maze can and probably will get lost, but someone exploring a labyrinth will not.

Sources

Judson, Anna P. "The Mystery of the Mycenaean 'Labyrinth.'" It's All Greek to Me, 2018. itsallgreektoanna.wordpress.com/2018/01/25/new-article-the-mystery-of-the-mycenaean-labyrinth/.

Harper, Douglas. "Labyrinth" and "Maze." Online Etymology Dictionary. etymonline.com/word/labyrinth, etymonline.com/word/maze.

Saward, Jeff. "Mazes or Labyrinths… What's the Difference & What Types Are There?" Labyrinthos, 2017. labyrinthos.net/Labyrinth%20Typology.pdf.

Plutarch, Greek Questions 45 (the Lydian labrys note). Perseus Digital Library.