Wednesday's Word -- Mother

Given that this coming Sunday is Mother's Day, my word of the week was an easy pick.  But not entirely, because I must admit that I'm no fan of Mother's Day (at least when it comes to honoring me as a mother).  If I get the time, I'm going to work on an "Ode on a Mother's Day Corsage" (in the spirit of Keat's "Ode on a Grecian Urn"), but for now, I'll settle for the word "mother."

Mother

"Mother," in its most literal sense, means "a female parent."  It also can mean "a person or thing that is very large, powerful, or impressive."  (As in, "I got stuck in the mother of all traffic jams."  Or "I hit the motherlode.")  But my favorite definition is simply this:  "the origin, source, or protector."  "The origin of or stimulus for something else."  "Origin" means "something from which anything arises or is derived."  "Stimulus" means "something that incites or quickens action, feeling, thought, etc."  If you have given birth to children, you are indeed the origin and beginning for your offspring.  And you should be the protector and stimulus as well.  But you don't have to give birth to be a mother.  Regardless of whether you have children of your own, you still can (and should) be the origin, source, protector and stimulus of the next generation.

The word "mother" originates from an Indo-European root (mater) that (appropriately) means "mother."  (Mother is the source and origin, after all!)  The word is based on the baby-talk form ma (a linguistic near-universal found in many of the world's languages).  Here is something I quite like.  The IE root for mother is also the origin for tree trunk, matrix, substance, stuff, matter, and metropolis.

Makes me think of Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree.  And the tree loved the boy.  Very much.