15c.  Inca citadel high in the Andes Mountains of Peru, from Quechua (Inca) machu "old man" + pikchu "peak."

also Magna Charta, 1560s, Medieval Latin, literally "great charter" (of English personal and political liberty). The thing was obtained from King John, June 15, 1215; the name is attested in Anglo-Latin by 1218. See magnate, card (n.).

designating a diploma or degree of higher standard than average, by 1856, Latin, literally "with great praise;" from magna (see magnate) + cum laude.

a fertility goddess, 1728, Latin, literally "great mother;" see magnate + mother (n.1).

"principal line of a railway," 1841, from main (adj.) + line (n.). Meaning "affluent area of residence" is by 1917, originally (with capitals) that west of Philadelphia, from the "main line" of the Pennsylvania Railroad which added local stops to a string of backwater towns west of the city late 19c. that helped turn them into fashionable suburbs.

The Main Line, Philadelphia's most famous suburban district, was deliberately conceived in the 1870's and 1880's by the [Pennsylvania] Railroad, which built high-toned housing developments, ran hotels, more or less forced its executives to plunk their estates out there, and created a whole series of somewhat spurious Welsh towns along the railroad tracks. ... Now everybody assumes these all date from 1682, like the Robertses; but as Chestnut Hill people like to say, "nobody but Welsh peasants lived on the Main Line till the Railroad built it up." [Nathaniel Burt, "The Perennial Philadelphians," 1963]

The original station stops were, in order out from the city, Overbrook, Merion, Narberth, Wynnewood, Ardmore, Haverford, Bryn Mawr, Paoli. The train line for commuters along it was colloquially, "the Paoli local."

"principal street of a (U.S.) town," 1810, from main (adj.) + street. Used allusively to indicate "mediocrity, small-town materialism" from late 19c., a sense reinforced by the publication of Sinclair Lewis's novel "Main Street" (1920).

But a village in a country which is taking pains to become altogether standardized and pure, which aspires to succeed Victorian England as the chief mediocrity of the world, is no longer merely provincial, no longer downy and restful in its leaf-shadowed ignorance. It is a force seeking to dominate the earth, to drain the hills and sea of color, to set Dante at boosting Gopher Prairie, and to dress the high gods in Klassy Kollege Klothes. Sure of itself, it bullies other civilizations, as a traveling salesman in a brown derby conquers the wisdom of China and tacks advertisements of cigarettes over arches for centuries dedicate to the sayings of Confucius. ["Main Street"]

also maitre d, 1942, a shortening of maitre d'hotel (q.v.).

1530s, "head domestic, master or superintendent of the table in a mansion," from French maître d'hôtel, literally "house-master," from Old French maistre "master; skilled worker, educator" (12c.), from Latin magistrum (see magistrate). Sense of "hotel manager, manager of a dining room" is from 1890. Shortened form maître d' is attested from 1942; simple maitre in this sense is from 1899.

c. 1600, "get along, succeed," from make (v.) + out (adv.). Sense of "obtain a clear understanding of" is from 1640s; that of "discern or discover visually" is by 1754; sense of "have sexual relations with" is attested by 1939.

by 1884, from French mal du sìecle, "world-weariness, atrophy of the spirit, aristocratic boredom, deep melancholy over the condition of the world," supposedly a characteristic condition of young romantics in Europe in the early 19c. It answers to German Weltschmerz.