mother
part of speech
noun (mother, mothers); verb (mother, mothers, mothered — to care for like a mother)
meaning for a pupil
1) A mother is a woman who has a child. Your mother is your mom or mum. tree →
2) An animal mother is the female that has babies: the mother bird. tree →
3) To mother someone is to care for them, sometimes too much. tree →
4) Something can be called the mother of another thing when it gives rise to it or brings it about. tree →
sense in the lessons
a person in the story who gives, buys or bakes things; sometimes her age is compared with a child's; in science mother animals feed and protect their young; phrases «Mother's Day», «mother tongue» (first language), «Mother Nature», «grandmother», «stepmother»
examples
- His mother gave him 5 dollars. tree →
- Her mother is 3 times as old as she is. tree →
- Mother baked 24 cookies. tree →
- The mother bird brought 6 worms. tree →
- We made cards for Mother's Day. tree →
- The mother elephant protects her calf. tree →
- Her mother tongue is Spanish. tree →
- My mother is a nurse at the hospital. tree →
- Necessity is the mother of invention. tree →
note
A person who acts, not a number. Age problems: «mother is 30 years older» means add. Trap: «3 times as old» means multiply, not add. Mom (US, Canada), Mum (UK, Australia, NZ), Mam (Ireland, some of the UK) are friendly words for mother.
In the corpora
- In March 2024 photo agencies withdrew a Mother's Day family photo because it had been edited, and the Princess apologised.
- Wolves live in packs that are usually a family: a mother, a father and their young of different ages.
- Crocodiles lay eggs in nests; the mother guards them and carries the hatchlings to water in her mouth.
- Scorpions are arachnids whose outer shell glows blue-green under ultraviolet light; mothers carry their babies on their backs.
- Ducklings follow the first moving thing they see after hatching, usually their mother; this is called imprinting.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «mother» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.