noverca

Borrowed from Latin noverca.

• IPA^(key): /noˈvɛr.ka/, [n̺oˈvɛr̺kä]
• Stress: novèrca
• Hyphenation: no‧ver‧ca

noverca f (plural noverche) (literary)

1. stepmother, stepdame

   Synonym: matrigna

   • 1321, Dante Alighieri, La divina commedia: Paradiso, Le Monnier, published 2002, Canto XVI, lines 58–63, page 288:

     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

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

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /noˈwer.ka/, [nɔˈwɛr.ka]

noverca f (genitive novercae); first declension

1. stepmother
2. (by extension) a person, people, etc. who adopts the role of being a mother, especially to a foreigner.

First declension.

• novercālis
• novercor

• Eastern Romance:
  • Aromanian: nuearcã, nearcã, nãearcã
• Italian: noverca
• → Albanian: njerkë

• 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, 1883–1887)
• noverca in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire Illustré Latin-Français, Hachette