Materfamiliases [noun]

Materfamilias: "Where have you been all the morning, girls?"

Materfamilias (just arrived at Shrimpville—the children had been down a month before).

In England materfamilias is always complaining of servant difficulties.

Its chief importance is the prominence given to the materfamilias.

He was paterfamilias, she materfamilias; and the rooms assigned to her peculiar use were, as with us, the best in the house.

The door opened at last, and Paterfamilias entered with Materfamilias (whose headache was better), and followed by the candles.

There is nothing to tell the materfamilias; and yet, at her first attempt, she fills the honey-pot to the requisite depth.

In the first case, the wife became a materfamilias while in the second she was simply an uxor.

Materfamilias complacently remarks on the manifest superiority of the article they have purchased, to "that red rubbish."

And I, being vain (turn some people out of a room and you don't humble them properly), retort with—'materfamilias!'