Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Mother.
  • noun Offensive A black nursemaid, especially one formerly in the southern United States.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Same as stone-lugger, 2.
  • noun Mother; mama: a childish word.
  • noun Hence In the southern United States, especially during the existence of slavery, a colored female nurse; a colored woman having the care of white children, who often continue to call her mammy after they are grown up.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A child's name for mamma, mother.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun childish mamma; mother
  • noun US, historical In the southern United States, a black nanny employed to look after white children.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun an offensive term for a Black nursemaid in the southern U.S.
  • noun informal terms for a mother

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From dialectal mam, variant of mama.]

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