novercal

[noh-vur-kuhl]

adjective

1. of, like, or befitting a stepmother.

novercal

/ nəʊˈvɜːkəl /

adjective

1. rare,  stepmotherly

Other Word Forms

• unnovercal adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of novercal¹

1615–25; < Latin novercālis, equivalent to noverc ( a ) stepmother + -ālis -al ¹

Word History and Origins

Origin of novercal¹

C17: from Latin novercālis, from noverca stepmother

Example Sentences

Novercal, nō-vėr′kal, adj. pertaining to or befitting a stepmother.

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To that sister Lady Edgermond the second does not behave exactly in the traditionally novercal fashion, but she is scandalised by the girl's Italian ways, artistic and literary temperament, desire for society, etc.

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By a pathetic fallacy their capacity to suffer is measured by their apparent power to enjoy, and those are moved to tears by the spectacle of a Dauphin surrendered to the coarse and brutal tutelage of a sans-culotte, who read without emotion of thousands of Huguenot children torn from their mothers' arms and flung to the novercal cruelties of strangers in blood and creed.

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But the nurse suffered the pangs of a baffled stepmother, and looked with novercal eyes of hatred and disgust upon little Sam that had stolen away the hearts of men and women from one that in her eyes was a thousand times his superior.

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Associated word: novercal. steps, n. pl. stairs; stile; perron. sterile, a. barren, infecund, unproductive, unfruitful, unprolific. sterility, v. barrenness, infecundity, unproductiveness.

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