Etymologically
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mater

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Pronunciation

  • IPA (Classical): [ˈmaː.tɛr][1]
  • IPA (Ecclesiastical): [ˈmaː.ter][1]

Forms

māter f (genitive mātris); third declension[1] Inscriptions have a dative matre and a dative plural matris and matrabus.[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-Italic *mātēr, inherited from Proto-Indo-European *méh₂tēr (“mother”).[3][1][4] De Vaan takes the Indo-European word as a derivative in *-ter- of the nursery form *ma “mum”, realised as *méh₂- with a long vowel, and calls the root etymology uncertain.[3] Cognate with Faliscan mate, Oscan maatreís and Umbrian matres, with Sanskrit मातृ (mātár-), Avestan mātar-, Ancient Greek μήτηρ (mḗtēr), Armenian մայր (mayr), Albanian motër (“sister”), Lithuanian mótė, Old Church Slavonic мати (mati), Old High German muoter, Old English mōdor, Old Irish máithir and Tocharian B mācer, all “mother”.[3][5][6] Mātertera “maternal aunt” contains the comparative suffix *-tero-, “she who is like a mother”, and māteria “matter, timber” is a derivative.[3] Verrius Flaccus, as Festus reports, connected it with mātūrus “ripe, good”, and Isidore of Seville explained it as “matter” (materia), since the father is the cause.[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is found from Livius Andronicus onwards,[3][7] in whose Odyssey many suitors came to woo the hero's mother.[5]

Semantic evolution

Beyond the mother, it meant the mistress of a household (mater familias), in the plural married women or matrons, and poetically motherly feeling.[5] It was a foster-mother or nurse, as in Plautus' twins whose nurse could not tell them apart, a respectful address to old women, a title of the senior woman of a society or of the camp (mater castrorum), and mater patriae for an empress.[5] Goddesses bore it as a title, above all Cybele, the Mater deum or Magna Mater.[5]

Of animals it was the dam, of plants the parent stock, and the earth was the mother of all living things.[5] Figuratively it was the motherland, the mother city of a colony, and the source of a thing, as in “folly is the mother of all evils”.[5][2] Medieval Latin used it for an abbess and in mater ecclesia for the cathedral or the mother church of a parish, and vetus mater was Eve.[8][7] All Romance languages keep it, as Italian and Spanish madre, French mère and Portuguese mãe,[1] and English mater is a borrowing.[1]

Timeline

  • c. 280–200 BC – Livius Andronicus uses it of Odysseus' mother.[5][7]
  • c. 250–184 BC – Plautus uses it of a nurse and as an address to an old woman.[5][7]
  • 220–130 BC – Pacuvius calls the earth a mother.[5][7]
  • 81–43 BC – Cicero calls philosophy the mother of all good deeds.[5][7]
  • 70–19 BC – Virgil uses it of the motherland and of a parent tree.[5][7]
  • 98–115 AD – Tacitus reports the proposed title mater patriae.[5][7]
  • 540–604 AD – Gregory the Great has a medieval sense.[7]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A mother, as in mater familias, the mistress of a household, and in the plural matrons.[5][2]
  2. A foster-mother, a nurse.[5][2]
  3. A respectful address to an old woman, a title of the senior woman of a society, and mater patriae, a title of an empress.[5]
  4. A title of goddesses, especially Cybele.[5]
  5. The dam of an animal; the parent stock of a plant; the earth as mother of all.[5]
  6. The motherland; a mother city, a metropolis.[5][2]
  7. A source, an origin.[5][2]
  8. (Medieval Latin) An abbess, and mater ecclesia, a cathedral or mother church.[8][7]

Word family

  • bimāter
  • commāter
  • māterfamiliās
  • mātercula
  • māteria
  • māternus
  • mātertera
  • mātrastra
  • mātrātus
  • mātrēscō
  • mātricīda
  • mātrimōnium
  • māternitās
  • mātrīcālis
  • mātricīdium
  • mātrīcula
  • mātrīculārius
  • mātrimōniālis
  • mātrimus
  • mātrōnālis
  • mātrōnātus
  • mamma
  • pater
  • English mother
  • English maternal
  • English matter

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  3. ^ a b c d e de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
  4. ^ Pokorny, Julius (1959), Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Bern; Munich: Francke
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  6. ^ a b Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
  8. ^ a b Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill