Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Of, relating to, or characteristic of a stepmother.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Pertaining to a stepmother; suitable to a stepmother; step-motherly.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Done or recurring every ninth year.
- adjective Of or pertaining to a stepmother; suitable to, or in the manner of, a stepmother.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Of or pertaining to a
stepmother .
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support
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Examples
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By a pathetic fallacy their capacity to suffer is measured by their apparent power to enjoy, and those are moved to tears by the spectacle of a Dauphin surrendered to the coarse and brutal tutelage of a sans-culotte, who read without emotion of thousands of Huguenot children torn from their mothers 'arms and flung to the novercal cruelties of strangers in blood and creed.
The Story of Paris Thomas Okey 1893
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To that sister Lady Edgermond the second does not behave exactly in the traditionally novercal fashion, but she is scandalised by the girl's
A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 To the Close of the 19th Century George Saintsbury 1889
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But the nurse suffered the pangs of a baffled stepmother, and looked with novercal eyes of hatred and disgust upon little Sam that had stolen away the hearts of men and women from one that in _her_ eyes was a thousand times his superior.
The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 2 Thomas De Quincey 1822
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Oh! may we soon blot out the reproach which that neglect has justly rendered us liable to, since we abolished the novercal government of Britain!
Observations on the slaves and the indented servants, inlisted in the army, and in the navy of the United States. Antibiastes 1777
sionnach commented on the word novercal
adjective, pertaining to a stepmother. Is there a corresponding adjective for stepfathers?
January 30, 2007
qms commented on the word novercal
The fairy tales' libelous work'll
Condemn them to Hell's inner circle.
The Grimms and the Goose
Have knotted the noose
To hang the poor ladies novercal.
January 27, 2016