母

mǔ

mother; female elder; source or prototype

Meaning

Kinship and Social: Mother; includes biological mother, female elders, matriarchs of a lineage, or a general marker for "female" in archaic/formal contexts. May function as a title of respect for a woman of station and age.
Technical and Abstract: Source, origin, or generative principle. In technical contexts (such as metallurgy and casting), it denotes the master mold or prototype. In cosmological or philosophical contexts, it refers to the primordial state or matrix from which things emerge.

Noun: Used for a person or a source.
Modifier: When appearing in compounds outside of kinship contexts, often functions as an adjective meaning "original," "primary," or "master."

母 (mǔ) vs. 姆 (mǔ): The latter specifies a nurturing figure without kinship ties, such as a nurse or nanny.
母 (mǔ) vs. 妣 (bǐ): In ancestral rites or funerary texts, 妣 is typically used for the deceased mother; 母 remains the general term.
母 (mǔ) vs. 父 (fù): While both denote origin, 父 generally emphasizes authority and legal lineage, whereas 母 emphasizes nurturance, production, and the generative source.

Decontextualized translator aid. This page describes plausible lexical range; it does not choose what the glyph means in a particular passage.