madre

Forms

madre f (plural madres, masculine padre, masculine plural padres)^[1] Berceo has the proclitic form mader; dialect forms include magre in Argentina, máere and maire in Murcia, Andalusia and Chile, and may.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin māter (“mother”).^[2][3][4][1] Wiktionary takes it from the accusative, the Academy's dictionary of 1884 from the ablative.^[1][5] The word is used in every period and is common to all the Romance languages except Romanian: Portuguese mãe, Catalan mare, Occitan maire, French mère and Italian madre.^[2][6][7] Portuguese also used madre for the mother in its early centuries.^[7]

The Latin noun continues Proto-Italic *mātēr and Proto-Indo-European *méh₂tēr “mother”, the source also of Ancient Greek μήτηρ (mḗtēr), Old High German muoter and Old English mōdor.^[8][1] Gómez de Silva analyses the Indo-European word as a nursery word for mother with the suffix of kinship terms.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The DCECH dates the first record to a charter of 1074, in Oelschläger's list.^[2][3] The Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, known from a 14th-century copy) has it in a prayer: „prisist encarnación en Santa María madre” “you became flesh in Holy Mary, mother”.^[10][11]

Semantic evolution

Besides the main sense, Nebrija already records madre for the womb and for the bed of a river.^[2] Covarrubias (1611) adds the main sewer of a town and the larger drainage ditches, called madres beside the small hijuelas, the mother of pearl, and the matrices of type-founders, and quotes proverbs such as Qual la madre, tal la hija.^[12] Autoridades has the title given to nuns, la Madre Abadesa.^[13] In the Canaries madre named a secondary irrigation channel as early as 1502.^[14] Madre de agua “abundant spring” may reflect the Arabic use of أم (umm, “mother”) for a source.^[2]

In Mexican slang una madre is a worthless thing, while in Central America it can be something very big.^[15][1]

Timeline

• 1074 – the first record, in a charter.^[2][3]
• c. 1140 – Santa María madre in the Cantar de mio Cid.^[10]
• 1220–1250 – the derivatives madrastra and madrina in Berceo.^[2][3]
• 1259 – Alfonso X's astrological prose speaks of children in their mothers' wombs.^[16]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija records the senses “womb” and “riverbed”.^[2]
• 1502 – madre for an irrigation channel in the Canaries.^[14]
• 1526 – the first record from the Americas, in Nicaragua.^[17]
• 1611 – Covarrubias lists the sewer, the riverbed and printers' matrices.^[12]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology from Latin mater.^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. A mother, a woman who has borne a child; a woman in relation to her children.^[4][1]
2. A woman with motherly qualities, or one who acts as a mother.^[4]
3. A female animal that has borne young.^[4]
4. A title given to certain nuns: la madre superiora.^[4][1]
5. (historical) In hospitals and refuges, the woman in charge.^[4]
6. The womb.^[4]
7. (figurative) The founder or creator of something; the cause or origin of something: roca madre.^[4][1]
8. The bed of a river or stream.^[4][1]
9. The main irrigation channel; the main sewer.^[4]
10. The dregs of a wine or other drink.^[1]
11. (Mexico, vulgar) A worthless thing.^[15][1]

Word family

• madrastra
• madrero
• madrina
• madrinazgo
• amadrinar
• comadre
• comadreja
• comadrona
• enmadrarse
• desmadre
• madreselva
• madreperla

Related words

• materno
• matriz
• padre
• matrona
• matrimonio
• Latin mater
• Portuguese mãe

Usage notes

Phrases include madre patria “mother country” and la madre del cordero “the heart of the matter”.^[4][1] In Mexico madre is the base of many vulgar expressions, among them a toda madre “great”.^[1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 754
3. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. madre
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k 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. madre
5. ^ 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. 661
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
7. ^ a b Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 2094
8. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
9. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 434
10. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. madre
11. ^ Menéndez Pidal, Ramón (1908–1911), Cantar de Mio Cid: texto, gramática y vocabulario, 3 vols., Madrid: Bailly-Baillière, p. s.v. madre
12. ^ 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
13. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. s.v. madre
14. ^ a b Real Academia Española (2021–), Tesoro de los diccionarios históricos de la lengua española (TDHLE): Diccionario histórico (1933–1936), its unpublished slips, Diccionario histórico (1960–1996), DHECan, DHECR, DHEVen, https://www.rae.es/tdhle, p. s.v. madre
15. ^ a b Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. madre
16. ^ 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. madre
17. ^ 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. madre