Monday, May 12, 2003

05/12/03’s illustrious band:

Matrynym


Brought to you by A Word A Day, www.wordsmith.org.


Matronym (MA-truh-nim) noun

A name derived from the name of a mother or maternal ancestor. (Also metronym.)

[From Latin metr- (mother) + Greek -onym (name, word).]


A day-after Mother’s Day entry, straight from the AWAD service:


“It's easy to see that the terms maternal, maternity, matron, and matrimony have something to do with the sense ‘mother’ and are related to today's word, but what could metropolis, material, matter, matriculate, and matrix have in common with them? A metropolis is, literally, a mother city; matter and material derive from Latin materia, woody part of a tree, its source of growth; one matriculates to what is to be an alma mater; and matrix comes from Latin matrix, a female animal kept for breeding. All of these terms are ultimately offsprings of the Indo-European root mater-.”


Happy (Belated) Mother's Day to mothers everywhere! Especially Mother Media!


E-mail the Media Sensation: jugglernaut@hotmail.com

Visit the BND archives at http://jugglernaut.blogspot.com.

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