1. a female parent
2. a woman who has given birth to or raised a child
3. something that is the origin or source of something else
Usage: figurative

1. to care for or protect someone in a motherly way

Examples

• My mother taught me how to cook.
• She became a mother at age twenty-five.
• The mother cat protected her kittens.
• Necessity is the mother of invention.
• She mothered the orphaned children.
• The teacher mothered her students during the field trip.
• His mother called to check on him at college.
• The mother bird fed her babies in the nest.