| Library / English Dictionary |
MA
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
A master's degree in arts and sciences
Synonyms:
AM; Artium Magister; MA; Master of Arts
Classified under:
Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents
Hypernyms ("MA" is a kind of...):
master's degree (an academic degree higher than a bachelor's degree but lower than a doctor's degree)
Sense 2
Meaning:
A state in New England; one of the original 13 colonies
Synonyms:
Bay State; MA; Mass.; Massachusetts; Old Colony
Classified under:
Nouns denoting spatial position
Instance hypernyms:
American state (one of the 50 states of the United States)
Meronyms (parts of "MA"):
Taconic Mountains (a range of the Appalachian Mountains along the eastern border of New York with Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont)
Merrimack; Merrimack River (a river that rises in south central New Hampshire and flows through Concord and Manchester into Massachusetts and empties into the Atlantic Ocean)
Housatonic; Housatonic River (a river that rises in western Massachusetts and flows south through Connecticut to empty into Long Island Sound)
Charles; Charles River (a river in eastern Massachusetts that empties into Boston Harbor and that separates Cambridge from Boston)
Berkshire Hills; Berkshires (a low mountain range in western Massachusetts; a resort area)
Williamstown (a town in northwestern Massachusetts)
Salem (a city in northeastern Massachusetts; site of the witchcraft trials in 1692)
Plymouth (a town in Massachusetts founded by Pilgrims in 1620)
Cape Cod Canal (a canal connecting Cape Cod Bay with Buzzards Bay)
Cape Cod (a Massachusetts peninsula to the south of Boston extending into the Atlantic; a popular resort area)
Cape Ann (a Massachusetts peninsula to the north of Boston extending into the Atlantic Ocean)
Worcester (an industrial and university city in central Massachusetts to the west of Boston)
Springfield (a city and manufacturing center in southwestern Massachusetts on the Connecticut River)
Pittsfield (a town in western Massachusetts)
Medford (town in northeastern Massachusetts; residential suburb of Boston)
Lexington (town in eastern Massachusetts near Boston where the first battle of the American Revolution was fought)
Gloucester (a town in northeastern Massachusetts on Cape Ann to the northeast of Boston; the harbor has been a fishing center for centuries)
Concord (town in eastern Massachusetts near Boston where the first battle of the American Revolution was fought)
Cambridge (a city in Massachusetts just to the north of Boston; site of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Bean Town; Beantown; Boston; capital of Massachusetts; Hub of the Universe (state capital and largest city of Massachusetts; a major center for banking and financial services)
Domain member region:
Concord; Lexington; Lexington and Concord (the first battle of the American Revolution (April 19, 1775))
Holonyms ("MA" is a part of...):
America; the States; U.S.; U.S.A.; United States; United States of America; US; USA (North American republic containing 50 states - 48 conterminous states in North America plus Alaska in northwest North America and the Hawaiian Islands in the Pacific Ocean; achieved independence in 1776)
New England (a region of northeastern United States comprising Maine and New Hampshire and Vermont and Massachusetts and Rhode Island and Connecticut)
Sense 3
Meaning:
Informal terms for a mother
Synonyms:
ma; mama; mamma; mammy; mom; momma; mommy; mum; mummy
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("ma" is a kind of...):
female parent; mother (a woman who has given birth to a child (also used as a term of address to your mother))
Sense 4
Meaning:
One thousandth of an ampere
Synonyms:
mA; milliampere
Classified under:
Nouns denoting quantities and units of measure
Hypernyms ("mA" is a kind of...):
current unit (a measure of the amount of electric charge flowing past a circuit point at a specific time)
Holonyms ("mA" is a part of...):
A; amp; ampere (the basic unit of electric current adopted under the Systeme International d'Unites)
Context examples:
"How you do mean, ma'am?" asked the Professor.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
Excuse me, ma'am, but this is by no means my intention; I make no inquiry myself, and should be sorry to have any made by my friends.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
Yes, ma'am, I just see him leaning back in it, but he did not look up;—he never was a gentleman much for talking.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
“There are limits, you see, to our friend’s intelligence. It would have been a _coup-de-maître_ had he deduced what I would deduce and acted accordingly.”
(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Never had he been at such an altitude of living, and he kept himself in the background, listening, observing, and pleasuring, replying in reticent monosyllables, saying, Yes, miss, and No, miss, to her, and Yes, ma'am, and No, ma'am, to her mother.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
(shwah-NO-ma)
(Benign Schwannoma, NCI Dictionary)
Also called ma huang.
(Ephedra, NCI Dictionary)
However, new research from the Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA, has found that women with LDL levels below 100 mg/dl may actually be more at risk of hemorrhagic (bleeding) stroke.
(Low Levels of Bad Cholesterol Increase Stroke Risk, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)
As I write this to you, I am thinking of the old black-and-white 1960s TV show Dragnet and Sargent Joe Friday, whose signature phrase was, Just the facts, ma’am. (According to Google, however, Sargent Friday never said those exact words, but everyone attributes the line to Sargent Friday.) Anyway, if you keep Joe Friday’s words in mind, you will do really well—focus on the facts.
(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)
'Not a mite more than I ought, ma'am.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
