means A tall upright pole on a ship that supports the sails and rigging, or by extension any similar vertical pole carrying flags, antennas, or lights.

from From Old English 'mæst,' a word shared across the Germanic family — Dutch 'mast,' German 'Mast' — all pointing back to a Proto-Germanic root for a pole or post. It's likely a distant cousin of Latin 'malus' (mast), though scholars hedge on exactly how the lines connect. The seafaring sense is the oldest English use, but the same wooden logic later lent itself to anything that stands tall and bears a load against the sky.