madrastra

Forms

madrastra f (plural madrastras, masculine padrastro, masculine plural padrastros)^[1] Old Spanish forms include madrasta, madastra, madrastre and the matastra of the Glosas Silenses.^[2] The dissimilated madrasta is found in Alonso de Palencia (1490) and in popular speech, and is the Asturian form;^[3][4] Galician has madrasca.^[3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish madrastra, inherited from Late Latin mātrastra (“stepmother”).^[1][5][4] The Late Latin word, found in inscriptions of the Empire and in the Reichenau Glosses, was formed from Latin māter (“mother”) with -astra, a suffix for something that is only a poor likeness.^[1] The DLE explains it instead as a Spanish formation from madre with the suffix -astra.^[6] The masculine counterpart is padrastro.^[1]

Corominas calls it a derivative common to all of Gallo- and Ibero-Romance: Portuguese madrasta, Catalan madrastra, French marâtre and Occitan mairastra.^[3][1] The REW notes that it is missing in Italy, where the northern and Sicilian forms come from Provençal or Spanish.^[5] Catalan regularly dropped the first /r/, in madastra, while Portuguese and popular Spanish dropped the second, the first being kept by the influence of the word for mother.^[3]

The Latin word for mother goes back to *mātēr and Proto-Indo-European *méh₂tēr (“mother”).^[7][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Glosas Silenses (late 10th century) gloss Latin noverca “stepmother” with matastra.^[4][2] The CDH's first record in Spanish is the Liber Regum (c. 1194–1211, in a copy of the early 13th century): por el saluamiento que fizo a so madrastra, la reina dona Albira “for the rescue he made of his stepmother, Queen Elvira”.^[8] Corominas's first record is Berceo, and the Breve diccionario dates it 1220–1250.^[3][9]

Semantic evolution

The word appears early in the law codes, where the Fuero de Zorita and the Fuero de Brihuega regulate the shares of the children, the father and the stepmother.^[8] Berceo already used the stepmother's harshness as a comparison: in hell the damned will be treated lo que fazen madrastras a añados “as stepmothers treat stepchildren”.^[8] Covarrubias wrote in 1611 that a stepmother was always presumed not to love her stepchildren.^[10]

The Diccionario de Autoridades added the figurative use for anything that brings setbacks, quoting Calderón, for whom Ireland received him like a mother and then became a stepmother; in thieves' slang the word meant the prison and the chain.^[11] The Academy's 1884 edition called it a pejorative of madre.^[12] In the Americas Oviedo wrote in 1548 that most settlers held the land a stepmother, and in Mexico City in 1587 idleness was called madrastra de toda virtud “stepmother of all virtue”.^[13]

Timeline

• c. 950–1000 – the Glosas Silenses gloss noverca with matastra.^[4][2]
• c. 1194–1211 – the Liber Regum uses madrastra (in an early 13th-century copy).^[8]
• 1218–1250 – the Fuero de Zorita, the first record without a later copy.^[8]
• 1270–1284 – Alfonso X's Estoria de España has madrastra for a father's wife.^[14]
• 1490 – Alonso de Palencia has the dissimilated madrasta.^[3]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin noverca.^[15]
• 1548 – the first record in the Americas, in Oviedo.^[13]
• 1611 – Covarrubias defines the stepmother.^[10]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary calls it a pejorative of madre.^[12]

Meanings

Noun

1. A stepmother, the wife of someone's father by a later marriage: Se llevaba muy bien con su madrastra.^[6][1]
2. (figurative) A mother who treats her children badly; anything that harms or thwarts someone: La ciudad fue para él una madrastra.^[6][16]

Related words

• madre
• padrastro
• Latin māter
• Portuguese madrasta

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. madrastra
3. ^ a b c d e f Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 754
4. ^ a b c d e García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. art. 4203
5. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 5415b
6. ^ a b c Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. madrastra
7. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ a b c d e Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. madrastra
9. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. madre
10. ^ a b Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1100
11. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. s.v. madrastra
12. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 660
13. ^ a b Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, p. s.v. madrasta
14. ^ Kasten, Lloyd A.; Nitti, John J.; Gago Jover, Francisco (2002–), Diccionario de la prosa castellana del Rey Alfonso X, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (electronic edition 2024), p. s.v. madrastra
15. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 375
16. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. madrastra