MOTHERHOOD

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does motherhood mean? 

• MOTHERHOOD (noun)
  The noun MOTHERHOOD has 1 sense:

1. the kinship relation between an offspring and the mother

  Familiarity information: MOTHERHOOD used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• MOTHERHOOD (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The kinship relation between an offspring and the mother

Classified under:

Nouns denoting relations between people or things or ideas

Synonyms:

maternity; motherhood

Hypernyms ("motherhood" is a kind of...):

family relationship; kinship; relationship ((anthropology) relatedness or connection by blood or marriage or adoption)

Derivation:

mother (a woman who has given birth to a child (also used as a term of address to your mother))

 Context examples 

She was not aware of it, however, any more than she was aware that her desire that Martin take a position was the instinctive and preparative impulse of motherhood.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

She bounded in amongst them, her anxious and militant motherhood making her anything but a pretty sight.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

Meg drew her low chair beside her mother's, and with a little interruption in either lap, the two women rocked and talked lovingly together, feeling that the tie of motherhood made them more one than ever.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

But the Wild is the Wild, and motherhood is motherhood, at all times fiercely protective whether in the Wild or out of it; and the time was to come when the she-wolf, for her grey cub's sake, would venture the left fork, and the lair in the rocks, and the lynx's wrath.

(White Fang, by Jack London)