"mother of all" meaning in All languages combined

See mother of all on Wiktionary

Phrase [English]

Forms: mother of all — [canonical]
Etymology: 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”), though mother had long been used in somewhat similar senses in English, and other familial terms are used with the same meaning, like granddaddy (of all traffic jams) and father (of all battles). Etymology templates: {{calque|en|ar|أُمّ||mother (of)}} Calque of Arabic أُمّ (ʔumm, “mother (of)”) Head templates: {{head|en|phrase|head=mother of all —}} mother of all —
  1. (colloquial) 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). Wikipedia link: Saddam Hussein Tags: colloquial Synonyms: father, granddaddy, grandmammy Derived forms: Mother of all Bombs, Mother of all Budgets Related terms: mother
    Sense id: en-mother_of_all-en-phrase-yf3Zon5o Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English non-constituents, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries
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  "etymology_text": "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”), though mother had long been used in somewhat similar senses in English, and other familial terms are used with the same meaning, like granddaddy (of all traffic jams) and father (of all battles).",
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          "word": "Mother of all Bombs"
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          "word": "Mother of all Budgets"
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        {
          "text": "(etc)"
        },
        {
          "text": "Near-synonym: Big One"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2003 December 26, “2003 Movie Guide”, in Christian Science Monitor:",
          "text": "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.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2006, Jean Chatzky, “Get the Scoop”, in Money, vol. 35.8:",
          "text": "Five mail-order ice creams. Four pregnant women. Welcome to the mother of all taste tests.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "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:",
          "text": "“[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.",
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        "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)."
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        "(colloquial) 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)."
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          "word": "mother"
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      "word": "Mother of all Budgets"
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          "text": "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.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2006, Jean Chatzky, “Get the Scoop”, in Money, vol. 35.8:",
          "text": "Five mail-order ice creams. Four pregnant women. Welcome to the mother of all taste tests.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "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:",
          "text": "“[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.",
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        "(colloquial) 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)."
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          "word": "father"
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          "word": "grandmammy"
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      ],
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        "Saddam Hussein"
      ]
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  "word": "mother of all"
}

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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-12-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-11-21 using wiktextract (95d2be1 and 64224ec). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.