| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. |
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Appendix I
Indo-European Roots |
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| ENTRY: | m ter- |
| DEFINITION: | Mother. Based ultimately on the baby-talk form m-2, with the kinship term suffix *-ter-.
Derivatives include mother1, matrix, and matter.
1a. mother1, from Old English m dor, mother; b. mother2, from Middle Dutch moeder, mother. Both a and b from Germanic *mdar-. 2. alma mater, mater, maternal, maternity, matriculate, matrix, matron; madrepore, matrimony, from Latin mter, mother. 3. metro-; metropolis, from Greek m tr, mother. 4. material, matter, from Latin mteris, mteria, tree trunk (< “matrix,” the tree's source of growth), hence hard timber used in carpentry, hence (by a calque on Greek h l, wood, matter) substance, stuff, matter. 5. Demeter, from Greek compound Dmtr, name of the goddess of produce, especially cereal crops (d-, possibly meaning “earth”). (Pokorny mtér- 700.) |
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| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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