Mama

How to spell mama

4 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce mama

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does mama mean?

1. nounAn informal or affectionate word for one's mother.

Mama in a sentence

• The toddler ran to his mama for a hug after the nap.

• Every weekend she phones her mama to catch up on family news.

Where does mama come from?

Language of origin: Other

Mama is one of a small group of words that linguists call nursery or lallation words, formed from the easy, repeated babble 'ma-ma' that infants produce among their very first sounds. Because of this, strikingly similar forms appear independently across unrelated languages, and the classical Latin word mamma, meaning both 'breast' and, affectionately, 'mother', reflects the same instinctive origin. English picked up 'mama' as a familiar term for mother in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the spelling was reinforced by polite French maman, which was fashionable in genteel households. The doubled, symmetrical shape of the word mirrors the doubled babble that created it, which is exactly why it is spelled with the same syllable twice. Its everyday relatives include 'mamma', 'mammal' (an animal that suckles its young), and the more formal 'maternal'.

How the word is built

• reduplicated nursery syllable ma
• ma (an instinctive infant sound, doubled)