Word.ws English Dictionary

'mater

US/ˈmeɪtɚ/

'mater is the contraction of tomato.

Meaning of tomato

Noun

tomato (countable and uncountable, plural tomatoes)

  1. A widely cultivated plant, Solanum lycopersicum, having edible fruit.
  2. The savory fruit of this plant, most often red when ripe, treated as a vegetable in horticulture and cooking.
    • He was chopping a tomato to put in the salad.
  3. A shade of red, the colour typical of a ripe tomato.
  4. (slang) An attractive woman.
    • Deborah Harry, the New Wave goddess, is finally admitting -- after all the peroxide and posturing of the 1970's and 80's -- that she's really just a tomato (her word) from Paterson […].1999 April 4, Frank Decaro, “No Longer the Punch-Line State”, in The New York Times, section 9, page 1
  5. (slang) A stupid act or person.

See all 8 meanings of tomato

Forms of 'mater

plural'maters
alternative formmater

Origin of 'mater

Clipping of a dialectal pronunciation of tomato such as tomater (or the also-attested dialectal rendering termater) with intrusive rhotacism. Compare tater (“potato”) and 'naner (“banana”).

Words that rhyme with 'mater

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about 'mater

What is 'mater the contraction of?
'mater is the contraction of tomato.
How do you pronounce 'mater?
'mater is pronounced /ˈmeɪtɚ/ (US).

Words near 'mater in the dictionary

  1. 'lude
  2. 'ludes
  3. 'm
  4. 'magination
  5. 'maginations
  6. 'mater
  7. 'maters
  8. 'mato
  9. 'matoes
  10. 'member
  11. 'merica

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: 'mater (page history and authors); tomato (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “'mater.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/%27mater. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.