MOTHER – A Word Study

By |2017-05-05T12:51:46-05:00May 8th, 2017|Make Me Think Monday|1 Comment

Mother’s Day, the day set aside to honor mothers and motherhood, maternal bonds, and the influence of mothers in society, is fast approaching. This coming Sunday, May 14 to be exact.

Knowing Mother’s Day was so soon, I did a word search on the word Mother and learned some interesting facts.

Mother derives from the Old English term modor and can be used as a noun, a verb, and an adjective. Dictionary.com offered some interesting samples.

How many of these adjective examples do you recognize?

mother love – displaying the characteristics of a mother

mother hen – an overly protective person

mother wit – natural intelligence or wit

mother ship – a ship that serves smaller vessels

And these expressions (idioms) using mother?

a face only a mother could love – an unattractive person

at mother’s knee – learning something as a child

everybody/everyone and their mother – a hyperbole referring to a crowd

the mother of all _______ – the best or greatest of a type of thing

swear/swore on mother’s grave – a solemn confirmation that one is telling the truth because of the association with the sanctity of a parent’s gravesite

tied to mother’s apron strings – someone who has not asserted his independence from his mother

The informal variant of Mother is Mom. The Urban Dictionary provides various meanings for its use. Some like soccer mom I’m sure you’ve used.

Of all my research finds, this poem by Chirag Kapoor best sums up the meaning of mother for Mother’s Day. You might want to recite it for your Mom on Sunday.