Dictionary

co-mother en · NOUN

Etymology

* com- + mother, as calque of Latin commater, French commère.

Meanings

1. (obsolete) The relationship of a godmother to the other god-parents, and the legal parents, of a child.
   • It is considered incestuous for a co-mother and co-father to have sex relations 1967, Charles Wagley, Joao José Rescála, Amazon town, page 151:
2. In polygamy, a wife of one's father who is not one's mother; that is, co-wife of one's mother.
   • the two of them went to their mother's forest hut and tried to find a way to avenge their mother's death and kill their co-mother. 2001, Thomas Slone, One Thousand One Papua New Guinean Nights: Tales form 1972–1985, page 321:
3. In polygamy, the relationship between one co-wife and another, in respect to their children.
   • Notwithstanding the voluminous “co-wife” literature that Western anthropologists have used to define African marriage, “co-mother” is the preferred idiom in many African cultures for expressing the relationship amongst women married into the same family. 2003, Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmi, African women and feminism: reflecting on the politics of sisterhood, page 13:
4. In a lesbian couple, the nonbirth mother (partner of the birth mother) of a child, especially one who takes an equal role in mothering the child.
   • The dilemmas engendered by the absence of a biological tie between a child and co-mother illuminate the centrality of familial rights and obligations in American kinship. 2004, Robert Parkin, Linda Stone, Kinship and family: an anthropological reader, page 384:

Forms

Coordinates

co-father · co-father · co-parent · co-father

Relateds

co-wife · co-grandmother · co-sister · co-aunt · co-maternity · co-mother-in-law

Synonyms

stepmother · commère · sister-wife · cummer · gossip · sister-wife