Happy Mother's Day

It’s Mother’s Day, and as I have mentioned on several occasions there is a surfeit of negative words for women but a dearth of positive ones.

A mother’s love and correction accrete to develop good and strong children. A simple touch on a fevered brow is an anodyne, and her chary restraints keep her children from doing anything that could be deleterious.

A chary mother is one that is cautious or careful, and as a result protective. The word chary comes from an Old English word, cearig, which meant sorrowful, but by the 16^th century developed its current meaning.

Such cautiousness is designed to protect children from those things that would be deleterious, or harmful to their health or well-being.

Deleterious came to English in the 1640s from the Medieval Latin word deleterious, which came from the Greek word deleterios, which means noxious or harmful to health or well-being.

Noxious comes from the Latin word for injurious (noxius), so it had a sense of doing physical or moral harm that deleterious does not have. But it can also have a sense of evil that deleterious does not have. It came to English around 1500, and within a century the word obnoxious followed.

Obnoxious, which came from the Latin word obnoxiosus, was formed by adding ob-, meaning “toward,” to the same root from which we get noxious. In 1580 it meant “subject to the authority of another” but soon after, by the 1590s, developed the meaning of subject to something harmful. It was not until the 1670s that it developed its most common meaning of today: offensive. The former meaning of injurious is now in general disuse.

The word mother itself (it was modor in Old English) came from the Proto-Germanic root word mothær. In Old Norse it is moðir, in Danish it is , in Dutch moder, in Old High German she is your moeder, while in German she is your Mutter. The Latin is mater, Old Irish mathis, and Sanskrit matar. Formed by adding -ter, a kinship term suffix, to one of the earliest sounds a child makes, "ma", it is a word of warmth and love. Those blessed to have theirs mothers still around should take today to return some of the love and affection that has been given them by their mothers, no matter how you spell or pronounce it. There is never enough love. 

And to come back to my opening statement, dearth is a word that means scarcity or lack. It came to English in the mid-13^th century and was originally used to describe food in times of famine. Within a century its meaning expanded to anything that was scarce. Originally spelled derthe, it was formed from the Old English root word deore, which meant costly or dear, and from which we got our word dear.

Mothers are dear, and should be honored not just on this day but throughout the year. Now stop reading and call your mother.