mãe

• mãy, mãi (obsolete)
• manhê (Brazil, colloquial, used in yelling or slow speech)

From Old Galician-Portuguese mãy, nasalization of earlier *mae < *made, child-speech forms of madre, from Latin mātrem, the accusative of māter (“mother”). Doublet of madre.

Compare pai (“father”), which underwent a similar phonetic reduction from its root (Latin pater), but was not nasalized.

Cognate with Galician mai, nai, Mirandese, Leonese, and Aragonese mai and Asturian ma.

• Audio:

  (file)

• Homophone: Mem (Portugal)
• Rhymes: -ɐ̃j̃
• Hyphenation: mãe

mãe f (plural mães)

1. mother (female who gives birth to or parents a child)

   Synonyms: genetriz, genitora, mamã, (childish) mamãe, progenitora

   Coordinate term: pai

2. one's mother

   Mãe, a senhora viu meus óculos?

   Mom, have you seen my glasses?

3. (figurative) mother (source or origin)

   A Ibéria é a mãe da Era do Descobrimento.

   Iberia is the mother of the Age of Discovery.

4. (relational, in compounds) mother, stem (whence others spawn, are generated, are copied or stem)

   nave-mãe ― mothership

   célula-mãe ― stem cell

5. lees (sediment that settles during fermentation of beverages)

   Synonym: madre

• “mãe” in Dicionário Aberto based on Novo Diccionário da Língua Portuguesa de Cândido de Figueiredo, 1913