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Definition of mother noun from the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary

mother

noun
 
 
/ˈmʌðə(r)/
 
/ˈmʌðər/
Idioms
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  1.  
     a female parent of a child or animal; a person who is acting as a mother to a child
    • I want to buy a present for my mother and father.
    • the relationship between mother and baby
    • She's the mother of twins.
    • a mother of three (= with three children)
    • a young/new/single mother
    • an expectant (= pregnant) mother
    • Jenny is a stay-at-home mother of three.
    • Affordable childcare is critical for working mothers.
    • She was a wonderful mother to both her natural and adopted children.
    • the mother chimpanzee caring for her young
    see also birth mother, den mother, earth mother, queen mother, surrogate mother, tiger mother
    Extra Examples
    • The new candidate was raised by a single mother in South London.
    • She acted as a surrogate mother to the brothers.
    • Her distraught mother had spent all night waiting by the phone.
    • She felt proud that she had raised four children as a lone mother.
    • She inherited the urge to travel from her mother.
    • The boys were like their father, but Louise took after her mother.
    • The court decided she was an unfit mother.
    • caring for his sick mother
    • his beloved mother
    • the proud mother of the bride
    • This is my mother, Joan.
    Topics Family and relationshipsa1, Life stagesa1
    Oxford Collocations Dictionaryadjective
    • lone
    • single
    • unmarried
    • …
    verb + mother
    • resemble
    • take after
    • inherit something from
    • …
    See full entry
  2. the title of a woman who is head of a convent (= a community of nuns) see also Mother Superior
    3. Word OriginOld English mōdor, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch moeder and German Mutter, from an Indo-European root shared by Latin mater and Greek mētēr.
Idioms
at your mother’s knee
  1. when you were very young
    • I learnt these songs at my mother's knee.
the mother of (all) something
  1. (informal) used to emphasize that something is very large, unpleasant, important, etc.
    • I got stuck in the mother of all traffic jams.
necessity is the mother of invention
  1. (saying) a difficult new problem forces people to think of a solution to it
old enough to be somebody’s father/mother
  1. (disapproving) very much older than somebody (especially used to suggest that a romantic or sexual relationship between the two people is not appropriate)
See mother in the Oxford Advanced American DictionarySee mother in the Oxford Learner's Dictionary of Academic English
Check pronunciation: mother

Nearby words

trait
noun
 
 
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