novercal

From Latin novercalis, from noverca (“a stepmother”).

• IPA^(key): /nəʊˈvɜː(ɹ)kəl/
• Rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)kəl

novercal (not comparable)

1. (dated) Of or pertaining to a stepmother.
   • 1713, W[illiam] Derham, Physico-Theology: Or, A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, from His Works of Creation. […], London: […] W[illiam] Innys, […], →OCLC:

     when almost the whole tribe of birds do thus, by incubation, produce their young , it is a wonderful deviation , that some few families only ſhould do it in a more novercal way

   • 1889, Robert Browning, The Ring and the Book, Volume I‎^[1], page 77, lines 486—491:

     Guido's old lady-mother Beatrice, / Who since her husband, Count Tommaso's death, / Had held sole sway i' the house,—the doited crone / Slow to acknowledge, curtsey and abdicate,— / Was recognized of true novercal type, / Dragon and devil.

• stepmotherly

• “novercal”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.