means A female parent — the one who gave birth to, raised, or otherwise cares for a child.

from One of the deepest words in the language, traced to Proto-Indo-European *méh₂tēr — the same ancient root that gives Latin mater, Greek mētēr, Sanskrit matar, and a whole family tree of European 'mother' words. The leading theory is touchingly simple: it grows from the baby-babble syllable 'ma,' the easy open sound an infant makes first, with the *-ter ending that also marks 'father' and 'brother.' From there it traveled through Old English mōdor to the modern 'mother.'