noverca

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Italian

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin noverca.

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /noˈvɛr.ka/
  • Rhymes: -ɛrka
  • Hyphenation: no‧vèr‧ca

Noun

noverca f (plural noverche) (literary)

  1. stepmother, stepdame
    Synonym: matrigna
    • 1316–c. 1321, Dante Alighieri, “Canto XVI”, in Paradiso‎, lines 58–63; republished as Giorgio Petrocchi, editor, La Commedia secondo l'antica vulgata‎, 2nd revised edition, Florence: publ. Le Lettere, 1994:
      Se la gente ch’al mondo più traligna
      non fosse stata a Cesare noverca,
      ma come madre a suo figlio benigna,
      tal fatto è fiorentino e cambia e merca,
      che si sarebbe vòlto a Simifonti,
      là dove andava l’avolo a la cerca
      Had not the folk, which most of all the world degenerates, been a stepdame unto Caesar, but as a mother to her son benignant, some who turn Florentines, and trade and discount, would have gone back again to Simifonte there where their grandsires went about as beggars

Further reading

  • noverca in Treccani.it – Vocabolario Treccani on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana

Latin

Etymology

Related to novus (“new”) and cognate with Old Armenian նոր (nor, “new”).

Pronunciation

Noun

noverca f (genitive novercae); first declension

  1. stepmother
    • 8 CE, Ovid, Fasti 3.769–770:
      Nȳsiadas nymphās puerum quaerente novercā
      hanc frondem cūnīs opposuisse ferunt
      When his stepmother was searching for the boy, the nymphs of Nysa
      carried this foliage to set against his cradle.
      (The Nysiads used ivy leaves to hide the cradle of baby Dionysus from Juno – ever-hostile to the children her husband Jupiter fathered with others – including this son of Jupiter and Semele.)
  2. (by extension) a person, people, etc. who adopts the role of being a mother, especially to a foreigner.

Declension

First-declension noun.

singular plural
nominative noverca novercae
genitive novercae novercārum
dative novercae novercīs
accusative novercam novercās
ablative novercā novercīs
vocative noverca novercae

Derived terms

Descendants

  • Aromanian: nuearcã, nearcã, nãearcã
  • → Albanian: njerkë (ancient borrowing)
  • → Italian: noverca

References

  • “noverca”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  • “noverca”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
  • noverca in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
  • noverca in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
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