Female parents, or to care for someone in a protective and nurturing way.
From Old English 'modor,' related to Sanskrit 'matar' and Latin 'mater.' The word is ancient across Indo-European languages and likely comes from baby talk 'ma-' sounds.
The word 'mother' appears almost identically across unrelated languages—'madre' (Spanish), 'mère' (French), 'Mutter' (German)—because it's one of the first sounds babies make, so nearly every culture named the person who responds to that sound.
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