Ma
adj, det, name, noun, particle, slang ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 Initialism of Master of Arts. abbreviation, alt-of, countable, initialism, uncountable
- 2 Abbreviation of milli-arcsecond. abbreviation, alt-of, plural-normally
- 3 mother, mama colloquial
"Once the silky gent who ran a barge called the Knuckle Sandwich tried to persuade Borglum's ma and da to sell him their little dwarfish boy for twelve gold coins."
- 4 May.
- 5 Negative space in Japanese art. uncountable
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- 6 Mother, mom, mama. informal, uncountable
- 7 a master's degree in arts and sciences wordnet
- 8 Initialism of mature audience, a television rating. US, abbreviation, alt-of, countable, initialism, uncountable
- 9 The landlady of a theater. colloquial
"[…] that dear little man writing in the guestbook of the "Ma" or theatrical landlady […]"
- 10 informal terms for a mother wordnet
- 11 Initialism of master-at-arms; also MAA. US, abbreviation, alt-of, countable, initialism, uncountable
- 12 one thousandth of an ampere wordnet
- 1 Initialism of moving average. abbreviation, alt-of, initialism, not-comparable
- 1 Alternative spelling of my. alt-of, alternative, dialectal, informal
- 1 Alternative form of mah. Manglish, Singlish, alt-of, alternative
- 2 Alternative spelling of mah. alt-of, alternative
- 1 Abbreviation of Massachusetts: a state of the United States. abbreviation, alt-of, uncountable
- 2 Abbreviation of May. abbreviation, alt-of
- 3 A common surname from Chinese of East Asian derivation.
- 4 A language spoken in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
- 5 Abbreviation of Maluku: a province of Indonesia. abbreviation, alt-of, uncountable
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- 6 Abbreviation of Maranhão: a state of Brazil. abbreviation, alt-of, uncountable
- 7 Abbreviation of Mastercard. abbreviation, alt-of, uncountable
"Shares of Visa (V) and Mastercard (MA) moved slightly higher after the deal was announced."
Example
More examples"Lao Gan Ma and I have a love-hate relationship."
Etymology
The sound, which parents interpret as a reference to themselves, is very commonly made by infants. For more on the linguistic process whereby infants' monosyllables are tied to ancient word roots for parents, see mama, papa, mātēr, and patēr.
Abbreviation.
From my.
From Cantonese 嘛 (maa³, “of course!”).
From Mandarin 嗎／吗 (ma).
Japanese 間
Transcription of 馬／马 (mǎ).
Related phrases
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.