mother of all
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Calque of Arabic أُمّ (ʔumm, “mother (of)”). Popularized and given its current sense by Saddam Hussein's claim that the impending Gulf War would be the أُمّ المَعَارِك (ʔumm al-maʕārik, “mother of (all) battles”),[1] though mother had long been used in somewhat similar senses in English,[2] and other familial terms are used with the same meaning, like granddaddy (of all traffic jams) and father (of all battles).
Phrase
[edit]- (colloquial, idiomatic) Used before a plural noun to form a compound noun having the sense of: the greatest or largest of (its kind); the most epic example of (its kind).
- Synonyms: father of all, granddaddy of all, grandmammy of all, etc.
- Near-synonym: Big One
- 2003 December 26, “2003 Movie Guide”, in Christian Science Monitor:
- Driving to a dinner engagement, a Parisian woman gets stuck in the mother of all traffic jams, offers a ride to a handsome pedestrian, and enters a fleeting affair that catches both of them by surprise.
- 2006, Jean Chatzky, “Get the Scoop”, in Money, vol. 35.8:
- Five mail-order ice creams. Four pregnant women. Welcome to the mother of all taste tests.
- 2024 October 30, Laurent Belsie, “Surprisingly, Wall Street doesn’t seem to care who gets elected. So far, at least.”, in The Christian Science Monitor[1]:
- “[Donald Trump's tariff proposal] is a prescription for the mother of all stagflations,” Larry Summers, Treasury secretary during the Clinton administration, told Bloomberg TV back in June.
Derived terms
[edit]See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (2006), page 1327, "mother of all"
- ^ Douglas Harper (2001–2026), “mother”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.