Plural / 3rd person of mama. Showing the entry for mama.
mama
noun
a name under which Ninkhursag was worshipped
Origin
The origin of the noun is uncertain; it is probably a reduplication of ma, thought to be a sound made by babies when breastfeeding. The word is possibly influenced by Middle French maman (“mother”) (modern French maman), mamme (both probably from Latin mamma (“breast; nurse; (childish) mother, mama; grandmother”), probably cognate with Ancient Greek μᾰ́μμη (mắmmē, “breast; (childish) mother, mama; (Koine) grandmother”), both possibly ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *meh₂- (“to nurse; mama, mother”)), but this is also uncertain as all the words could have developed independently as onomatopoeias. Etymology 1, noun sense 3 (“(Caribbean) used as a term of address for a woman”) is possibly partly from a West African language; compare Akan mmá, mmaa (“woman”). The interjection and verb are derived from the noun.
Phrases
- baby mama
- big mama
- crunchy mama
- hoochie mama
- mama bear
- mama grizzly
- mama pad
- mama put
Related words
Word family
Broader terms
WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.