emma
/ˈɛmə/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: 4.23 in modern English
8
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
2
Syllables
3
Unique Chars
Meaning
name
A female given name from the Germanic languages.
Example Sentences
- "Both Saxon and Norman chroniclers unite in representing the youthful Queen Emma as in a peculiar degree gifted with elegance and beauty; so that many flattering epithets had been bestowed on her - as "the Pearl," "the Flower," or "the Fair Maid" of Normandy."
- "Emma Calvé...since Madame Bovary the name Emma suggests a solid bourgeois foundation, a country family...Emma Eames, a chilly name...a wind from the East."
- "The cottage now belonged to Emma's mother Beatrix, who was a tutor in English literature at a women's college, specialising in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novel. This may have accounted for Emma's Christian name, for it had seemed to Beatrix unfair to call her daughter Emily, a name associated with her grandmother's servants rather than the author of The Wuthering Heights, so Emma had been chosen, perhaps with the hope that some of the qualities possessed by the heroine of the novel might be perpetuated."
- "Ken Cuccinelli tweaked the famous poem from Emma Lazarus – whose words, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” are long associated with immigration to the US and the nation’s history as a haven – as part of a case for strict new measures pushed Monday by the Trump administration that could dramatically change the legal immigration system."
Etymology
Brought to England by the Normans; short form of compound given names beginning with a Frankish prototheme Ermin- or Irmin- "entire", from Proto-Germanic *ermunaz.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: *ermunaz