What is the etymology of 催{もよお}す. Neither Wiktionary nor Daijisen give any
information on the topic. Is there any connection to 押{お}す?
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etymology
What is the etymology of 催{もよお}す?
> What is the etymology of 催【もよお】す?

I cannot find much. The 日本国語大辞典【にほんこくごだいじてん】 (NKD) entry [here at
Kotobank](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E5%82%AC-507128) sadly includes no
derivation, but even so, it tells us a few things.

  * We can see that the historical kana spelling is もよほす. This categorically rules out any connection to 押【お】す.
  * We can see that the oldest citation is the 日本書紀【にほんしょき】 dating to 720, at the historical horizon of written Japanese. So this is a very old word indeed.
  * We can see that there is a related form もよひ. This tantalizes with a suggestion that there may have once been an intransitive base form もよふ, for which もよほす would represent a vowel-shifted causative / transitive form -- but もよひ is only attested from 1331, much too late.
  * There is the suggestively similar-sounding word 模様【もよう】, but that is a borrowing from Chinese roots only attested from the 1300s, and [the historical kana spelling of もやう](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E6%A8%A1%E6%A7%98-646749#E7.B2.BE.E9.81.B8.E7.89.88.20.E6.97.A5.E6.9C.AC.E5.9B.BD.E8.AA.9E.E5.A4.A7.E8.BE.9E.E5.85.B8) further rules that out.

The verb もよほす is long enough to suggest that this is a compound or
derivational form. Most native root words in Japanese are only two morae long.
However, I cannot find any clear etyma (roots) that would fit for a compound,
and with no evidence early enough for a derivational root (such as もよふ), we
are left with a bit of a mystery.
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