Co-mother

Quick meaning: Co-mother is a noun meaning In polygamy, a wife of one's father who is not one's mother; that is, co-wife of one's mother.

Meaning

In polygamy, a wife of one's father who is not one's mother; that is, co-wife of one's mother.

More Meanings

1. In polygamy, the relationship between one co-wife and another, in respect to their children.
2. 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.
3. (obsolete) The relationship of a godmother to the other god-parents, and the legal parents, of a child.

Example Sentences

It is considered incestuous for a co-mother and co-father to have sex relations

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.

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.

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.

Word Forms

• co-mothers
• commother

Synonyms for co-mother

Depending on context, synonyms include cummer, gossip, sister-wife, stepmother.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include co-father, compaternity, co-parent, cummer, godmama, co-mother-in-law.

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