Alma mater

From Freepedia

Alma mater is Latin for "nourishing mother". It was used in ancient Rome as a title for the mother goddess, and in Mediaeval Christianity for the Virgin Mary. In many modern languages it is principally heard as a term of academia. Thus in the English language it is used, though less frequently than formerly, as a sobriquet for the university or college a person has attended. In American English, it is also heard in reference to a high school or elementary school. Alma mater is sometimes the incipit of a school's anthem or song, and may be taken as a title for the genre. The term is more familiar in the United States than in the United Kingdom.

The word "matriculation" is derived from the Latin root word mater. The term suggests that the students are fed knowledge and taken care of by the educational institution.

Alma Mater Studiorum ("Nourshing mother of studies") is the name of the University of Bologna.

"Alma Matter" is the title of various songs, by such artists as Chicago, Moonspell, Alice Cooper, and Viktor Berkovsky and Dmitri Sukharev. Morrissey punned the phrase for his 1997 single "Alma Matters" ('Alma' is a woman's name, most famously used for Mike Baldwin's wife in the soap opera Coronation Street.

Furthermore, the term is the title of a Polish monthly academic publication, produced by Jagiellonian University. It is available online at http://almamater.come.to/.

"Alma Mater" is also the name of a sculpture on Green Street and Wright Street in University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The student government of Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario is called the "Alma Mater Society" (or AMS).