"unmother" meaning in English

See unmother in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: unmothers [plural]
Etymology: un- + mother Etymology templates: {{prefix|en|un|mother}} un- + mother Head templates: {{en-noun}} unmother (plural unmothers)
  1. A woman who is not a mother.
    Sense id: en-unmother-en-noun-52CJOntP

Verb

Forms: unmothers [present, singular, third-person], unmothering [participle, present], unmothered [participle, past], unmothered [past]
Etymology: un- + mother Etymology templates: {{prefix|en|un|mother}} un- + mother Head templates: {{en-verb}} unmother (third-person singular simple present unmothers, present participle unmothering, simple past and past participle unmothered)
  1. To cause to cease being a mother; to kill or otherwise remove (a mother's) children.
    Sense id: en-unmother-en-verb-by~HMtCk Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English terms prefixed with un- Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 7 75 18 Disambiguation of English terms prefixed with un-: 14 48 38
  2. To cause to cease having a mother or to fail to mother properly.
    Sense id: en-unmother-en-verb-khaF7KhZ

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for unmother meaning in English (4.7kB)

{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "un",
        "3": "mother"
      },
      "expansion": "un- + mother",
      "name": "prefix"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "un- + mother",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "unmothers",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "unmother (plural unmothers)",
      "name": "en-noun"
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  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1946, Sheila Wingfield, Beat Drum, Beat Heart, page 71",
          "text": "How we lace away The hours interminable, Intricate and Pale, we nuns And all such unmothers of men;",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1998, Ellen Cole, Janet M. Wright, Esther D Rothblum, Lesbian Step Families: An Ethnography of Love, page 11",
          "text": "There is experimentation with sexuality, monogamy and nonmonogamy, mothers and \"unmothers,\" parenting by groups of bilogical and/or fictive kins, living in separate households and coparenting, etc.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2015, Jessica Knoll, Luckiest Girl Alive",
          "text": "So there are mothers and unmothers, and while neither choice is the easy one to make, motherhood is at least the comfortable one.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A woman who is not a mother."
      ],
      "id": "en-unmother-en-noun-52CJOntP",
      "links": [
        [
          "woman",
          "woman"
        ],
        [
          "mother",
          "mother"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "unmother"
}

{
  "etymology_templates": [
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      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "un",
        "3": "mother"
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      "expansion": "un- + mother",
      "name": "prefix"
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  ],
  "etymology_text": "un- + mother",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "unmothers",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "unmothering",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "unmothered",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "unmothered",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
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  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "unmother (third-person singular simple present unmothers, present participle unmothering, simple past and past participle unmothered)",
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  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "7 75 18",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
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            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        },
        {
          "_dis": "14 48 38",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English terms prefixed with un-",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1640, Ovid, translated by John Gower, edited by Edward Alliston, Ovids Festivalls: Or Romane Calendar - Issue 2, page 33",
          "text": "One day modi mother and unmothered. True twinnes in birth and death ; together drown in this sad stream.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1823, Sophocles, The Tragedies of Sophocles - Volume 2, page 195",
          "text": "My father is departed, I with thee am fallen — thyself art dead and gone : but our foes laugh ; and our unmothered mother is frantic with delight; on whom thou oftentimes wouldst send me word in secret that thou wert on the point thyself to come an avenger.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1966, Cyril Tourneur, Lawrence J. Ross, The Revenger's Tragedy, page 34",
          "text": "I e'en quake to proceed, my spirit turns edge, I fear me she's unmother'd; yet I'll venture.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1999, Anglistica - Volume 3, page 97",
          "text": "The dead daughter presents the already complex mother/daughter relation and unveils in it the (abject?) desire to unmother: in Beloved, the killing of the daughter is done to free her from a future of slavery, and in this it discloses another story,",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To cause to cease being a mother; to kill or otherwise remove (a mother's) children."
      ],
      "id": "en-unmother-en-verb-by~HMtCk",
      "links": [
        [
          "cause",
          "cause"
        ],
        [
          "cease",
          "cease"
        ],
        [
          "mother",
          "mother"
        ],
        [
          "kill",
          "kill"
        ],
        [
          "children",
          "children"
        ]
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1952, William Goyen, Ghost and flesh: stories and tales, page 132",
          "text": "Whatever keeps me from my beginnings, whatever chops me off and isolates me from my whole life is to the harm of my spirit; it unmothers me; it dispossesses me of my heritage and of my truth, and how can I pass on what is mine if I have not received what was others' and passed on to me? he thought.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2006, Lorrie Goldensohn, Dismantling Glory",
          "text": "In his poems, Jarrell can finesse the emotional trauma of having been unmothered by a mother who betrayed him both with a divorce and with a displacing younger brother, by now being the mother in the domain of his poetry, wholly on his own terms.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To cause to cease having a mother or to fail to mother properly."
      ],
      "id": "en-unmother-en-verb-khaF7KhZ",
      "links": [
        [
          "cause",
          "cause"
        ],
        [
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        [
          "mother",
          "mother"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "unmother"
}
{
  "categories": [
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    "English entries with incorrect language header",
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    "English terms prefixed with un-",
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  "etymology_text": "un- + mother",
  "forms": [
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      "form": "unmothers",
      "tags": [
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  "head_templates": [
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      "args": {},
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  "senses": [
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1946, Sheila Wingfield, Beat Drum, Beat Heart, page 71",
          "text": "How we lace away The hours interminable, Intricate and Pale, we nuns And all such unmothers of men;",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1998, Ellen Cole, Janet M. Wright, Esther D Rothblum, Lesbian Step Families: An Ethnography of Love, page 11",
          "text": "There is experimentation with sexuality, monogamy and nonmonogamy, mothers and \"unmothers,\" parenting by groups of bilogical and/or fictive kins, living in separate households and coparenting, etc.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2015, Jessica Knoll, Luckiest Girl Alive",
          "text": "So there are mothers and unmothers, and while neither choice is the easy one to make, motherhood is at least the comfortable one.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A woman who is not a mother."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "woman",
          "woman"
        ],
        [
          "mother",
          "mother"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "unmother"
}

{
  "categories": [
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    "English entries with incorrect language header",
    "English lemmas",
    "English nouns",
    "English terms prefixed with un-",
    "English verbs"
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  "etymology_text": "un- + mother",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "unmothers",
      "tags": [
        "present",
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        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "unmothering",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "unmothered",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "unmothered",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
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      "args": {},
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  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1640, Ovid, translated by John Gower, edited by Edward Alliston, Ovids Festivalls: Or Romane Calendar - Issue 2, page 33",
          "text": "One day modi mother and unmothered. True twinnes in birth and death ; together drown in this sad stream.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1823, Sophocles, The Tragedies of Sophocles - Volume 2, page 195",
          "text": "My father is departed, I with thee am fallen — thyself art dead and gone : but our foes laugh ; and our unmothered mother is frantic with delight; on whom thou oftentimes wouldst send me word in secret that thou wert on the point thyself to come an avenger.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1966, Cyril Tourneur, Lawrence J. Ross, The Revenger's Tragedy, page 34",
          "text": "I e'en quake to proceed, my spirit turns edge, I fear me she's unmother'd; yet I'll venture.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1999, Anglistica - Volume 3, page 97",
          "text": "The dead daughter presents the already complex mother/daughter relation and unveils in it the (abject?) desire to unmother: in Beloved, the killing of the daughter is done to free her from a future of slavery, and in this it discloses another story,",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To cause to cease being a mother; to kill or otherwise remove (a mother's) children."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "cause",
          "cause"
        ],
        [
          "cease",
          "cease"
        ],
        [
          "mother",
          "mother"
        ],
        [
          "kill",
          "kill"
        ],
        [
          "children",
          "children"
        ]
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1952, William Goyen, Ghost and flesh: stories and tales, page 132",
          "text": "Whatever keeps me from my beginnings, whatever chops me off and isolates me from my whole life is to the harm of my spirit; it unmothers me; it dispossesses me of my heritage and of my truth, and how can I pass on what is mine if I have not received what was others' and passed on to me? he thought.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2006, Lorrie Goldensohn, Dismantling Glory",
          "text": "In his poems, Jarrell can finesse the emotional trauma of having been unmothered by a mother who betrayed him both with a divorce and with a displacing younger brother, by now being the mother in the domain of his poetry, wholly on his own terms.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To cause to cease having a mother or to fail to mother properly."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "cause",
          "cause"
        ],
        [
          "cease",
          "cease"
        ],
        [
          "mother",
          "mother"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "unmother"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-06-23 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-06-20 using wiktextract (1b9bfc5 and 0136956). 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.