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mother definition

Overview

This page has 23 definitions of mother in English and Middle English. Mother is a noun and verb. Examples of how to use mother in a sentence are shown. Also define these 42 related words and terms: human, female, birth, baby, parent, child, pregnant, mother-to-be, animal, ancestor, greatest, significant, kind, mother of all, elderly, woman, community, mothering, Judges, KJV, Galatians, astrolabe, superior, abbess, hysteria, uterus, give birth, produce, father, nurture, stringy, mucilaginous, film, membrane, acetobacter, acetic acid, oxygen, air, mother, motherfucker, moth-er, and moder.

See also: Mother and moth-er

English mother definition

WOTD – 3 April 2016

Pronunciation

Etymology 1
A mother cat and her kittens

From Middle English moder, from Old English mōdor, from Proto-Germanic *mōdēr, from Proto-Indo-European *méh₂tēr. Superseded non-native Middle English mere (“mother”) borrowed from Old French mere (“mother”). Doublet of mater.

Alternative forms

  • mither (Scotland and Northern England)

Noun

mother (plural mothers)

  1. A (human) female who has given birth to a baby
    I am visiting my mother today.
    My sister-in-law has just become a mother.
    He had something of his mother in him.
    • 1988, Robert Ferro, Second Son:
      He had something of his mother in him, but this was because he realized that in the end only her love was unconditional, and in gratitude he had emulated her.
  2. A human female who parents an adopted or fostered child
  3. A human female who donates a fertilized egg or donates a body cell which has resulted in a clone.
  4. A pregnant female, possibly as a shortened form of mother-to-be.
    Nutrients and oxygen obtained by the mother are conveyed to the fetus.
    • 1991, Susan Faludi, The Undeclared War Against American Women:
      The antiabortion iconography in the last decade featured the fetus but never the mother.
  5. A female parent of an animal.
    The lioness was a mother of four cubs.
  6. (figuratively) A female ancestor.
  7. (figuratively) A source or origin.
    The Mediterranean was mother to many cultures and languages.
    • 1606, William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 3, 1866, George Steevens (editor), The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, page 278:
      Alas, poor country: / Almost afraid to know itself! It cannot / Be call'd our mother, but our grave:
    • 1844, Thomas Arnold, Fragment on the Church, Volume 1, page 17:
      But one in the place of God and not God, is as it were a falsehood; it is the mother falsehood from which all idolatry is derived.
  8. Something that is the greatest or most significant of its kind. (See mother of all.)
    • 1991, January 17, Saddam Hussein, Broadcast on Baghdad state radio.
      The great duel, the mother of all battles has begun.
    • Kind definition
      A type, race or category; a group of entities that have common characteristics such that they may be grouped together. (1 of 8 kind definitions)
    • Mother Of All definition
      Used before a plural noun to form a compound noun having the sense of: the greatest or largest of (its kind); the most epic example of (its kind).
  9. (when followed by a surname) A title of respect for one's mother-in-law.
    Mother Smith, meet my cousin, Doug Jones.
  10. (figuratively) Any elderly woman, especially within a particular community.
  11. (figuratively) Any person or entity which performs mothering.
    • Judges 5:7, KJV.
      The inhabitants of the villages ceased, they ceased in Israel, until that I Deborah arose, that I arose a mother in Israel.
    • Galatians 4:26, KJV.
      Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.
  12. The principal piece of an astrolabe, into which the others are fixed.
  13. The female superior or head of a religious house; an abbess, etc.
  14. (obsolete) Hysterical passion; hysteria; the uterus.
    (Can we find and add a quotation of Shakespeare to this entry?)
    • 1665, Robert Lovel, Pambotanologia sive Enchiridion botanicum, page 484:
      T.V. dicusseth tumors and mollifieth them, helps inflammations, rising of the mother and the epilepsie being burnt.
    • 1666, Nicholas Culpeper, The English Physitian Enlarged, page 49:
      The Root hereof taken with Zedoary and Angelică, or without them, helps the rising of the Mother.
    • 1979, Thomas R. Forbes, The changing face of death in London, in Charles Webster (editor), Health, Medicine and Mortality in the Sixteenth Century (1979), page 128:
      St Botolph's parish records ascribed three deaths to 'mother', an old name for the uterus.
    • Uterus definition
      The womb, an organ of the female reproductive system in which the young are conceived and develop until birth.
Synonyms
Antonyms
Hypernyms
Coordinate terms
Related terms
Etymologically related
 
► English words prefixed with matri-
Derived terms
 
Translations

See mother/translations § Noun.

Etymology 2

From Middle English modren, from the noun (see above).

Verb

mother (third-person singular simple present mothers, present participle mothering, simple past and past participle mothered)

  1. (chiefly transitive) To give birth to or produce (as its female parent) a child. (Compare father.)
    • 1998, Nina Revoyr, The Necessary Hunger: A Novel, Macmillan (→ISBN), page 101:
      Q's sister, Debbie, had mothered two kids by the time she was twenty, with neither of the fathers in sight.
    • 2010, Lynette Joseph-Bani, The Biblical Journey of Slavery: From Egypt to the Americas, AuthorHouse (→ISBN), page 51:
      Zilpah, Leah's maid, mothered two sons for Jacob, Gad and Asher. Leah became pregnant once more and had two more sons, Issachar, and Zebulun, and a daughter, Dinah, thus Leah had seven children for Jacob.
    • Give Birth definition
      To release live offspring from the body into the environment. (1 of 3 give birth definitions)
  2. (transitive) To treat as a mother would be expected to treat her child; to nurture.
    • c. 1900, O. Henry, An Adjustment of Nature
      She had seen fewer years than any of us, but she was of such superb Evehood and simplicity that she mothered us from the beginning.
Translations

References

Etymology 3

Ultimately from Proto-Germanic *muþraz (“sediment”), perhaps through intermediate Middle Dutch modder (“filth, dregs”).

Noun

mother (plural mothers)

  1. A stringy, mucilaginous or film- or membrane-like substance (consisting of acetobacters) which develops in fermenting alcoholic liquids (such as wine, or cider), and turns the alcohol into acetic acid with the help of oxygen from the air.
    pieces of mother, adding mother to vinegar

Verb

mother (third-person singular simple present mothers, present participle mothering, simple past and past participle mothered)

  1. (transitive) To cause to contain mother (“that substance which develops in fermenting alcohol and turns it into vinegar”).
    mothered oil / vinegar / wine
  2. (intransitive, of an alcohol) To develop mother.
    • 1968, Evelyn Berckman, The Heir of Starvelings, page 172:
      Iron rusted, paper cracked, cream soured and vinegar mothered.
    • 2013, Richard Dauenhauer, Benchmarks: New and Selected Poems 1963-2013, page 94:
      Your lamp / was always polished, wick / trimmed, waiting; yet the bridegroom / somehow never came. Summer dust / settled in the vineyard. Grapes / were harvested; your parents / crushed and pressed them, but the wine / mothered.

Etymology 4

Clipping of motherfucker

Alternative forms

Noun

mother (plural mothers)

  1. (euphemistic, vulgar, slang) Motherfucker.
    • 1989 December 19, Slim Randles, “Entrepreneur Hopes Luminaria Delivery Service Catches On”, in The Albuquerque Journal, Albuquerque, New Mexico, page 2:
      Stick a votive candle in it and fire that mother up, right?
    • 2011, Beyoncé Knowles (lyrics and music), “Run the World (Girls)”, in 4‎[1]:
      Who run this mother
  2. (euphemistic, colloquial) A striking example.
    • 1964, Richard L. Newhafer, The last tallyho:
      November, 1943 If ever, Cortney Anders promised himself, I get out of this mother of a thunderstorm there is a thing I will do if it is the last act of my life.
    • 1980, Chester Anderson, Fox & hare: the story of a Friday night, page 5:
      Some hot night there's gonna be one mother of a riot down here. Just wait." He'd been saying the same thing since 1958, five years of crying wolf.
    • 2004 Nov, Rajnar Vajra, “The Ghost Within”, in Analog Science Fiction & Fact, volume 124, page 8:
      Basically, we wind up with a program. One mother of a complex application.
    • 2006, Elizabeth Robinson, The true and outstanding adventures of the Hunt sisters:
      Josh, whose fleshy face resembles a rhino's - beady wide-set eyes blinking between a mother of a snout
Synonyms
Translations
motherfucker — see motherfucker

Etymology 5

Coined from moth by analogy to mouser.

Pronunciation

Noun

mother (plural mothers)

  1. Alternative form of moth-er
    • Moth-Er definition
      A person (especially an entomologist) or animal that catches moths.

References


Further reading

  • “mother” in Douglas Harper, Online Etymology Dictionary, 2001–2021.

Anagrams

Middle English mother definition

Noun

mother

  1. (Late Middle English) Alternative form of moder