mama

Forms

mama f (plural mamas)^[1]

Etymology

It continues inherited from Latin mamma (“mother; breast”).^[2][3][4][1] The sense “mother” is as old as the language, while the sense “breast” is a scientific term taken from Latin by learned means, at the beginning of the 18th century.^[2][3] Vox likewise calls the anatomical sense a semantic loan from Latin spread in the 18th century.^[5] The REW instead takes the Spanish word for “mother” from French.^[6]

The same Latin word is Italian mamma, French maman and Romanian mumă.^[6] Portuguese mama “breast” is recorded from the 14th century.^[7] The Latin diminutive mammula gave Spanish mambla, a breast-shaped hillock (in place names from 972), and Portuguese mamoa; mamilla gave mamella.^[2][3]

The Latin word is a nursery word, a reduplication of a labial nasal with /a/; de Vaan reconstructs Proto-Indo-European *mama and compares Ancient Greek μάμμη (mámmē, “mother”) and Lithuanian mamà.^[8] Wiktionary leaves open whether it is native or borrowed from the Greek word.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas finds the sense “mother” frequent in the Mozarabic kharjas transmitted by poets of the 11th and 12th centuries.^[2][3][9] Most early hits of the CDH are forms of the verb mamar, but the third part of Alfonso X's General Estoria (before 1280) renders the Song of Songs as ¡Qué fermosas son las tus mamas, mi hermana, mi esposa! “how fair are your breasts, my sister, my bride!”.^[10] Nebrija (c. 1495) gives mama, madre de niños “mama, mother of children”, Latin mamma.^[11][2]

Semantic evolution

In the Golden Age mama, stressed on the first syllable, was the usual childish word for “mother”: in 1589 Juan de Pineda wrote that the first thing children learn to say to their mothers is mama.^[2][12] Cuervo cites verses by Tirso and of 1653 whose metre confirms that stress.^[2] The Diccionario de Autoridades (1734) had both senses: the anatomical one, with a quotation from an anatomist, and “mother”, the word children use for their mothers or nurses.^[13]

In the 18th century the French-influenced court made mamá fashionable, and the Academy admitted it in 1803.^[2][3] The older stress survived in most of the Americas and in much of Spain, as in Asturias and Almería, as a rustic or familiar form.^[2] By 1869 the Academy listed mama for “mamá” only as an Andalusian usage.^[14] In Puerto Rico it was still used by country people in the 1880s and has since gone out of use.^[15] Moliner calls it rural and nearly obsolete.^[16] The first record in the Americas is from Nicaragua in 1526, of a little girl crying mama for her mother.^[17] In Argentina mama also means “drunkenness”.^[18]

Timeline

• 11th–12th centuries – the sense “mother” in the Mozarabic kharjas.^[2][3]
• before 1280 – mamas “breasts” in the Song of Songs of the General Estoria.^[10]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija: “mother of children”.^[11]
• 1526 – the first record in the Americas, from Nicaragua.^[17]
• 1589 – Juan de Pineda on children's first words.^[2]
• 1734 – the Diccionario de Autoridades gives the anatomical sense and “mother”.^[13]
• 1803 – the Academy admits the French-style stress mamá.^[2]
• 1869 – the Academy labels mama “mamá” as Andalusian.^[14]

Meanings

Noun

1. (anatomy) The breast: the paired glandular organ of mammals that secretes milk in females: cáncer de mama.^[4][16][19]
2. (popular, children's language) mum, mother, = mamá.^[4][1][16]
3. (Argentina) drunkenness.^[18]

Word family

• mamario
• mamar
• mamón
• amamantar
• mamita

Related words

• mamífero
• mamá
• mambla
• mamella
• Latin mamma

Usage notes

In standard Spanish mama is the anatomical term, and the word for “mother” is mamá.^[19][16] The older stress máma lives on in rural and familiar speech in much of the Americas and Spain.^[2]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 791
3. ^ a b c d e f Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. mama
4. ^ 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. mama
5. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. mama
6. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
7. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. mama
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. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. mama
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. mama
11. ^ a b Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 376
12. ^ Cabrera, Ramón (1837), Diccionario de etimologías de la lengua castellana, 2 vols., Madrid: Imprenta de Marcos Bueno, p. s.v. mama
13. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 468
14. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 483
15. ^ Academia Puertorriqueña de la Lengua Española; Universidad de Puerto Rico, Tesoro lexicográfico del español de Puerto Rico, https://tesoro.pr, p. s.v. mama
16. ^ a b c d Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. mama
17. ^ 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. mama
18. ^ 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. mama
19. ^ a b Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. mama