This week's Thursday's term to learn is in honor of Mother's Day. Most of you will recognize the English word that comes from the Latin matrimonium: matrimony. You will also know that matrimony is a 4-syllable word for what can usually be said in 2: marriage.
Online Etymology says that the last part of matrimonium, " -monium," is a "suffix signifying action, state, condition." The first part of the word comes from the Latin for mother, which is mater. For the Romans, matrimonium was for the purpose of making the woman a mother and the man a father. The words of contracts make this explicit:
liberorum procreandorum causa in matrimonium eam collocavit*This phrase means that the father places his daughter into matrimony for the sake of procreating children. There are many other terms associated with marriage that don't define this particular role. Coniugium is a common one that refers to the joining of the man (maritus) and woman (uxor), but even uxor may suggest the woman's procreative function, as Susan Treggiari suggests in Roman Marriage: Iusti Coniuges from the Time of Cicero to the Time of Ulpian.
mater-, matri-, matro- matr- + is an interesting list of words based on the Latin for mother. Among the terms I had never seen was matradelphy, defined as a mother's brother who is uncle to her children.
Read more on Roman Marriage.
* "A Latin Marriage Contract
Henry A. Sanders
Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, (1938), pp. 104-116.
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