μήτηρ

μήτηρ (meter, "MAY-tair") is the Greek word for mother, and the record shows it living where lineage and blood are at stake: 1,507 occurrences across 124 works. The two Homeric epics hold the largest share — the Odyssey (107) and the Iliad (103) — but the next cluster is all tragedy of the cursed house: Euripides' Phoenissae (57), Orestes (56), and Electra (51), then Herodotus's Histories (51). The word gathers where sons and mothers destroy one another; the plays that turn on matricide and the childbed carry it most.

The lexica agree the sense is plain. LSJ (Liddell–Scott–Jones, 1940) opens the entry "mother, dam, mother-bird, queen" — the word reaches past the human, to the animal's dam (Iliad 17.4, Odyssey 10.414), the mother-bird (Iliad 2.313), even the queen bee. Beekes (Etymological Dictionary of Greek, Brill 2010) glosses it simply "mother" and preserves the compounds Greek built on it, e.g. μητρο-πάτωρ (metropator), "mother's father, grandfather on the mother's side." Chantraine (Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque, 1968–1980) adds a quieter register: μήτηρ καθ᾽ ὑποκορισμόν, "mother as a term of endearment," a familiar word that could also name the wet-nurse.

For the deeper history the record carries a pointer through the lexicon itself. In Beekes's view (Brill 2010) the word descends from the inherited *meh₂ter-, "mother," surfacing as Doric μάτηρ (mater) beside Attic μήτηρ, and already written in the Mycenaean tablets as ma-te ("mother"). Frisk (Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 1960–1972) treats the same word and confirms the Mycenaean ma-te and the compounds.

The cited surfaces are mostly the everyday genitive of descent: μητρὸς (metros), "of the mother," which the record places in Acts (3.1) and in Aeschylus's Agamemnon at 264–265, where the word sits in the mouth of the doomed house; the same play holds the accusative μητέρʼ (meter', "mother," object case) at 1233–1235.

If the same word names the dam, the wet-nurse, and the queen bee, what is it we are really naming — a person, or a relation?