Definitions

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

  • noun Mother.
  • noun Offensive A black nursemaid, especially one formerly in the southern United States.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Mother; mama: a childish word.
  • noun Hence In the southern United States, especially during the existence of slavery, a colored female nurse; a colored woman having the care of white children, who often continue to call her mammy after they are grown up.
  • noun Same as stone-lugger, 2.

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

  • noun A child's name for mamma, mother.

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

  • noun childish mamma; mother
  • noun US, historical In the southern United States, a black nanny employed to look after white children.

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

  • noun an offensive term for a Black nursemaid in the southern U.S.
  • noun informal terms for a mother

Etymologies

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

[From dialectal mam, variant of mama.]

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