stepmother

American  

[step-muhth-er] / ˈstɛpˌmʌð ər /

noun

• stepmothers
  plural

1. the wife, by a later marriage, of one's parent.

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stepmother British  

/ ˈstɛpˌmʌðə /

noun

1. a woman who has married one's father after the death or divorce of one's mother

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• stepmotherliness
  noun
• stepmotherly
  adverb

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• stepmothers
  plural

Etymology

Origin of stepmother

First recorded before 900; Middle English stepmoder, Old English stēopmōdor; step- + mother ¹ ( def. )

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

stepmother stepmothers

At the dinner table, Wendy looks and acts more like one of the kids than their potential stepmother, especially when she makes Jack promise to make pancakes in the morning.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 2, 2026

And, as David Kissinger put it: “My stepmother came from this Waspy world, straight out of a Katharine Hepburn film, and my father was a refugee from Nazi Germany.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 27, 2026

The trial heard Johnston had previously been in a relationship with Brown's stepmother.

From BBC ● Aug. 21, 2026

A second crisis hit Flavio's campaign when his stepmother, Michelle Bolsonaro, posted an Instagram video saying he had "disrespected me and mistreated me ... he said I didn't understand anything about politics."

From Barron's ● Jul. 25, 2026

That night, while her father and stepmother and stepsisters sat together in the parlor, exclaiming over the gifts he had brought them from Seatown, Ash slipped away from them all.

From "Ash" by Malinda Lo

And you thought spiteful stepmothers wreaked havoc only in fairy tales.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 11, 2026

My tone may sound alarmist, but it’s my attempt to be realistic, especially based on the number of letters I receive from and about stepmothers in this column.

From MarketWatch ● Jan. 20, 2026

“You might not have that money, but you have siblings, you have stepmothers, you have mothers — you have relationships and the complexities of blended families.”

From Seattle Times ● Nov. 30, 2022

Such was the life of Delia Fiallo, who said she was “born to write telenovelas,” the Spanish-language soap operas in which love usually conquers all, including class divides and disapproving stepmothers.

From Washington Post ● Jun. 30, 2021

Mother looked him directly in the eyes and said, “Your father is a good man and he loves you very much. He just seems to attract the wrong stepmothers for you boys.”

From "A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier" by Ishmael Beah