mother
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
6 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "mother", 6-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "mother" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "mother" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
mother is aEnglishnoun. It means: A female parent, especially of a human; a female who parents a child (which she has given birth to, adopted, or fostered). Pronounced /ˈmʌð.ə/. It ranks #576 in English word frequency. Often confused with motor and moths.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | mother |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈmʌð.ə/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #576 |
| Misspellings tracked | 9 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for mother is 6 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈmʌð.ə/. Corpus data places it at rank #576 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 18 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 9 documented wrong-spelling variants for mother, with forms such as "mmother", "mohter", and "motehr". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "motor", "moths", "mover", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *méh₂tēr Proto-Germanic *mōdēr Proto-West Germanic *mōder Old English mōdor Middle English moder English mother From Middle English moder, from Old English mōdor, from Proto-West Germanic *mōder, from Proto-Germanic *mōdēr… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is mother, spelled M-O-T-H-E-R, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A female parent, especially of a human; a female who parents a child (which she has given birth to, adopted, or fostered).
- 2A female who has given birth to a baby; this person in relation to her child or children.
- 3A pregnant female; mother-to-be; a female who gestates a baby.
- 4A female who donates a fertilized egg or donates a body cell which has resulted in a clone.
- 5A female ancestor.
- 6A source or origin.
- 7Something that is the greatest or most significant of its kind. (See mother of all.)
- 8A title of respect for one's mother-in-law.
- 9A term of address for one's wife.
- 10Any elderly woman, especially within a particular community.
- 11Any person or entity which performs mothering.
- 12Dregs, lees; a stringy, mucilaginous or film- or membrane-like substance (consisting of a culture 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.
- 13A locomotive which provides electrical power for a slug.
- 14The principal piece of an astrolabe, into which the others are fixed.
- 15The female superior or head of a religious house; an abbess, etc.
- 16Hysterical passion; hysteria; the uterus.
- 17A disc produced from the electrotyped master, used in manufacturing phonograph records.
- 18A person who is admired, respected, or looked up to within a particular fandom or community; see also: serve cunt
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *méh₂tēr Proto-Germanic *mōdēr Proto-West Germanic *mōder Old English mōdor Middle English moder English mother From Middle English moder, from Old English mōdor, from Proto-West Germanic *mōder, from Proto-Germanic *mōdēr, from Proto-Indo-European *méh₂tēr. Doublet of Madeira, mata, mater, matrix, and matter. Some have proposed that the "dregs" sense is from Middle Dutch modder (“filth”), from Proto-Germanic *muþraz (“sediment”), but modder is not known in this meaning. On the other hand, words for "mother" have developed the secondary sense of "dregs" in several Romance and Germanic languages; compare Dutch moer, French mère de vinaigre, German Essigmutter, Italian madre, Medieval Latin māter, and Spanish madre.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: mmother,mohter,motehr,motherr,mothher,mothre,motther,mtoher,omther
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for mother
Misspelling Variants of "mother"
Frequency rank: #576 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter M in our English index: