Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Informal Mother.
  • noun A woman.
  • noun A wife.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Mother: a word used chiefly in address and familiar intercourse, especially by and with infants, children, and young people.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun See mamma.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun hypocoristic Mother, female parent.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a name under which Ninkhursag was worshipped
  • noun informal terms for a mother

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Of baby-talk origin; see mā- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From a reduplication of ma; a trend present in many Indo-European languages, probably with ultimate origin in baby talk; or perhaps representing, in altered form, a continuation of Middle English mome ("mother, aunt"), from Proto-Germanic *mōmōn (“mother, aunt”), from Proto-Indo-European *méh₂-méh₂, reduplication of *méh₂- (“mother”), related to German Muhme ("aunt"), Latin mamma ("mother, nurse"), Irish mam ("mother"), Lithuanian mama, moma ("mother").

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Examples

Comments

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  • Means "father" in Georgian.

    July 13, 2009

  • Hey - I just heard this recently pronunced word pronounced!

    No I didn't. :-(

    *mama!*

    August 20, 2011

  • 'familiar intercourse'

    August 20, 2011