Word.ws English Dictionary

novercal

/nəʊˈvɜː(ɹ)kəl/

novercal adjective: of or pertaining to a stepmother.

Adjective

novercal (not comparable)

  1. (dated) Of or pertaining to a stepmother.
    • 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 way1713, 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
    • 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.1889, Robert Browning, The Ring and the Book, Volume I, page 77, lines 486—491
    Synonyms:
    stepmotherly

Synonyms of novercal

Origin of novercal

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

Words that rhyme with novercal

Questions about novercal

What does novercal mean?
Novercal means of or pertaining to a stepmother.
What part of speech is novercal?
Novercal is an adjective.
How do you pronounce novercal?
Novercal is pronounced /nəʊˈvɜː(ɹ)kəl/.

Words near novercal in the dictionary

  1. novendials
  2. novene
  3. novennia
  4. novennial
  5. novennium
  6. novercal
  7. novercaphobia
  8. noverint
  9. noverints
  10. Noveschi
  11. novex

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: novercal (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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