The term is related to alumnus, literally meaning a "nursling" or "one who is nourished", that frequently is used for a graduate.[6]
Etymology
Although alma (nourishing) was a common epithet for
Ceres,
Cybele,
Venus, and other mother goddesses, it was not frequently used in conjunction with mater in classical Latin.[7] In the Oxford Latin Dictionary, the phrase is attributed to
Lucretius in his De rerum natura where he used the term as an epithet to describe an earth goddess:
Denique caelesti sumus omnes semine oriundi
omnibus ille idem pater est, unde alma liquentis
umoris guttas mater cum terra recepit (2.991–993)[8]
We are all sprung from that celestial seed,
all of us have same father, from whom earth,
the nourishing mother, receives drops of liquid moisture
The earliest documented use of the term to refer to a university in an English-speaking country is in 1600, when the
University of Cambridge printer, John Legate, began using an emblem for the
university press.[9][10] The first-known appearance of the device is on the title-page of a book by
William Perkins, A Golden Chain, where the Latin phrase Alma Mater Cantabrigia ("nourishing mother Cambridge") is inscribed on a pedestal bearing a nude, lactating woman wearing a
mural crown.[11][12]
In English etymological reference works, often the first university-related usage is cited as 1710, when an academic mother figure is mentioned in a remembrance of
Henry More by Richard Ward.[13][14]
An altarpiece mural in Yale University's
Sterling Memorial Library, painted in 1932 by
Eugene Savage, depicts the Alma Mater as a bearer of light and truth, standing in the midst of the personified arts and sciences.