MOTHER TONGUE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Mother tongue

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/mˈəðər təŋ/ Listen

adjective

Mother adj. Received by birth or from ancestors; native, natural; as, mother language; also acting the part, or having the place of a mother; producing others; originating. "It is the mother falsehood from which all idolatry is derived."

Mother cell (Biol.), a cell which, by endogenous divisions, gives rise to other cells (daughter cells); a parent cell.

Mother church, the original church; a church from which other churches have sprung; as, the mother church of a diocese.

Mother country, the country of one's parents or ancestors; the country from which the people of a colony derive their origin.

Mother liquor (Chem.), the impure or complex residual solution which remains after the salts readily or regularly crystallizing have been removed.

Mother queen, the mother of a reigning sovereign; a queen mother.

Mother tongue.

(a)

A language from which another language has had its origin.

(b)

The language of one's native land; native tongue.

Mother water. See Mother liquor (above).

Mother wit, natural or native wit or intelligence.

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Etymology of 'Mother tongue'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Mother tongue" Quotes from Famous Books

... for most of my life—it is Lancelot Carnegan. I hail from Ireland, as you may suppose; and perhaps you may have already discovered a touch of the brogue—but it has been well-nigh washed out of me; still, though we children of Erin roam the world over, we never entirely get rid of our mother tongue." ...

— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston

... sick, take especial care that they repeat to you the apostles' creed in their mother tongue. Interrogate them on every article, and ask them if they believe sincerely. After this, make them say the confiteor, and the other Catholic prayers, and then read the gospel ...

— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden

... school French and of one's opportunities to learn upon Continental trips. It took me three years of hard work to recover from the sort of French which I learned at school, and I am not well yet. The French spoken by Trehayne was the French of the nursery. It was almost, if not quite, his mother tongue, just as his English was. Trehayne's French accent did not fit into Trehayne's history as retailed to us by Dawson. From that moment I plumped for Trehayne as the cutter ...

— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone

... Agnes, who spoke the Mohican language as fluently as their mother tongue, would then explain to the Indians the contents of the chapter read, in their native language, and sometimes Agnes would sing one of the fine songs which she had cleverly translated into ...

— Three Young Pioneers - A Story of the Early Settlement of Our Country • John Theodore Mueller

... N. language; phraseology &c 569; speech &c 582; tongue, lingo, vernacular; mother tongue, vulgar tongue, native tongue; household words; King's English, Queen's English; dialect &c 563. confusion of tongues, Babel, pasigraphie^; pantomime &c (signs) 550; onomatopoeia; betacism^, mimmation, myatism^, nunnation^; pasigraphy^. lexicology, philology, glossology^, glottology^; linguistics, ...

— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

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