mothered

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of mother.

   Throughout the war, she mothered every refugee child who arrived at the farm.

   The old nurse had mothered three generations of the same family.

   Note

   The past form covers more than nurturing. Besides she mothered the refugees, the verb can mean to have produced a child as its parent. In the cellar it can take an object, meaning to give a liquid mother, or stand alone, meaning that fermenting alcohol has grown the film that turns it into vinegar. Placed before a noun, as in a mothered child, it shades into the caring adjective.

2. 2
   adjective

   Receiving the care, protection, and attention that a mother provides.

   A well-mothered infant develops trust in the people around it.

   After years in institutions, the boy finally felt mothered for the first time.

   Similarcherished

   Oppositeneglected, unloved

   Note

   The nurturing adjective goes back to Middle English modred, the same pairing of mother and the -ed ending that the modern spelling shows. It shares its form with a cellar word of separate origin, the adjective for thickened liquids, which is built on mother in the sense of a fermented culture. Context nearly always settles which is meant: a child is mothered with care, while oil or vinegar is mothered with film.

3. 3
   adjective

   Thick and viscid, resembling the film or membrane that forms on the surface of fermented liquids.

   The neglected vinegar grew mothered and cloudy at the bottom of the barrel.

   A mothered layer clung to the inside of the fermenting crock.

   Similarslimy

   Note

   Here mother is the slimy film that gathers on fermenting liquids, and the adjective describes whatever has thickened as if coated by it. John Dryden's translation of Virgil's Georgics (1697) has it: "They oint their naked limbs with mothered oil." It does not grade, so nothing is more mothered than something else. That sets it apart from the nurturing adjective, an unrelated word it happens to resemble.

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