sb. Also 1 stéop-, 4 stip-, 5 stappe-, Caxton styfe- (after Du.). [OE. stéopmódor: see STEP-. Cf. Fris. stiepmoder (NFris. stjap-, WFris. stiep-), MLG. stēfmoder, Du. stiefmoeder, OHG. stiufmuoter (MHG. stiefmuoter, mod.G. -mutter), Sw. styfmoder, Da. stifmoder.]
1. A woman who has married one’s father after one’s mother’s death.
c. 725. Corpus Gloss. (Hessels), N 167. Nouerca, steopmoder.
c. 893. K. Ælfred, Oros., III. vii. § 2. Heo wæs Philippuses steopmodor.
c. 1205. Lay., 222. He ȝef heo his stepmoder For þon lofe of his broþer. Ibid., 14421. Heore steopmoder.
c. 1290. S. Eng. Leg., 47/8. Stepmoder is selde guod.
c. 1305. St. Swithin, in E. E. P. (1862), 45. Seint Edwardes fader was þat his stipmoder a-slouȝ.
1390. Gower, Conf., I. 104. My Stepmoder for an hate, which toward me sche hath begonne, Forschop me.
1432–50. trans. Higden (Rolls), V. 273. His stappemodyr.
1471. Caxton, Recuyell (Sommer), 83. His styfemoder.
1562. J. Heywood, Prov. & Epigr. (1867), 195. Thy fathers second wife, thy steppe mother.
1598. Bernard, trans. Terence’s Hecyra, II. i. With one consent all stepmothers hate their daughters in law.
1611. Shaks., Cymb., I. i. 71. You shall not finde me (Daughter) After the slander of most Step-mothers, Euill-ey’d vnto you.
a. 1692. Shadwell, Volunteers, I. ii. What is that Fathers Wife of kin to you? Clara. My true Stepmother.
1865. Le Fanu, Guy Deverell, iv. I. 51. His mother indeed she was not; but only the stepmother of his deceased wife.
1914. J. Mackay, Ch. in Highlands, ii. 49. Whereby a man might marry his stepmother, or the widow of his brother.
b. transf. Said of a bird that hatches another bird’s eggs.
1567. Maplet, Gr. Forest, 97 b. So soone as those yong can heare but their … Natiue Dams note, they leaue their Stepmother or Nurses [the Partridge’s] foode by and by.
1711. Addison, Spect., No. 121, ¶ 1. The young, upon the sight of a pond, immediately ran into it; while the step-mother, with all imaginable anxiety, hovered about the borders of it.
1815. Stephens, in Shaw’s Gen. Zool., IX. I. 76. The bird often proves a mother and step-mother at the same time, by bringing into life the whole brood.
c. fig.
1387–8. T. Usk, Test. Love, III. ix. (Skeat), 86. My dul wit is hindred by stepmother of foryeting. [Cf. Higden, Polychr. (Rolls), I. 5 Novercante oblivione.]
1396–7. in Eng. Hist. Rev. (1907), XXII. 296. Qwan þe chirche of Yngelond began to dote in temporalte aftir her stepmodir þe grete chirche of Rome.
a. 1400. Relig. Pieces fr. Thornton MS. (1867), 13. Ydillues es … stepmodire and stamerynge agaynes gude thewes.
1426. Lydg., De Guil. Pilgr., 15985. The Stepmoder off vertu, And ful enmy to cryst ihesu, Wych callyd ys ‘Prosperyte.’ Ibid. (1430–40), Bochas, II. ii. (1554), 44. Flattery Which is a stepmother called … To all vertue.
1646. J. Hall, Horæ Vac., 15. He seem’d to carry Reason along with him, who called Nature Step-mother, in that she gives us so small a portion of Time.
1659. N. R., Prov., Eng. Fr., etc. 32. Fortune to one is a mother, another a step-mother.
1664. Evelyn, Sylva (1679), 18. Such places, and all sort of Clay, is held but a step-mother to Trees.
c. 1695. J. Miller, Descr. New York (1843), 10. New York, in these [necessaries], is not unkind; but though a stepmother to those who come from England, yet furnishes them … plentifully.
1705. Hickeringill, Priest-cr., II. v. 56. Happy we, that Her Majesty does not behave Her self like a Step-mother to the Moderate Party.
1913. Contemp. Rev., June, 827. The monastery had got the credit of founding a school, but had really been a stepmother to it.
quasi-adj. 1715. Chappelow, Right Way to be Rich (1717), 81. Turn’d naked into a frowning Step-Mother World.
d. attrib. as stepmother dole, † shive (with reference to the stinginess ascribed to stepmothers). Also Comb. stepmother-in-law.
1483. Cath. Angl., 361/2. A Stepmoder schyfe, colirida.
1847. C. Brontë, Jane Eyre, xxxi. Nature … forgetting her usual stinted stepmother dole of gifts, had endowed this, her darling, with a granddame’s bounty.
1904. Verney Mem., II. 133. Eleanor, Countess of Warwick … stepmother-in-law to the Protector’s daughter.
2. dial. a. More fully, stepmother’s blessing: an agnail.
1818. Wilbraham, Chesh. Gloss., Stepmother’s Blessing, a little reverted skin about the nail, often called a back friend.
1862. C. C. Robinson, Dial. Leeds, 421. Stepmothers, hangnails.
b. (See quot.)
1828. Carr, Craven Gloss., Step-mother, the name given to the flowers of the violet in general, but more particularly to those of the viola tricolor, pansies or hearts-ease, etc.
Hence Stepmother v. trans. (a) to provide with a stepmother; (b) to behave as a stepmother to. Stepmotherly a., pertaining to or characteristic of a stepmother; hence Stepmotherliness.
1847. [M. W. Savage], Bachelor of Albany (1848), 210. [The cook] induced or obliged her barbarous mistress to abandon, for that time, her step-motherly designs.
1860. Wraxall, Life in Sea, viii. 192. The Acephala have not been treated by her [Nature] in such a step-motherly fashion as might be supposed from their headless condition.
1887. Augusta Wilson, At Mercy of Tiberius, vii. When I want my children step-mothered I will let you know.
1894. Kate K. Ide, in Advance (Chicago), 22 March. A good grandmother, whose grandchildren had become step-mothered.
1892. Jane Barlow, Irish Idylls, iii. 41. He knows what ills forthwith await him, what stepmotherliness of barren earth.
1896. E. A. King, Ital. Highways, 63. And in England, whose boast it should be to lead the van, the extension of our Universities’ privileges to women is even yet being opposed inch by inch, and by those who, of all others, should be generously ready to extend the benefits of knowledge—those who have themselves reaped all the advantages it has to confer. Alma Mater is but step-motherly to her daughters in our own country.
