Mothership

noun

noun ·3 syllables ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Alternative spelling of mother ship. alt-of, alternative
  2. 2
    The state of being a mother. uncountable

    "How did Solomon decide a question of mothership?"

Synonyms

All synonyms
maternitymomnessmotherhood

Example

More examples

"If all goes as planned, the probe will smash into the comet early Monday. The mothership will record images of the resulting crater and spray of debris, and beam the pictures back to mission scientists."

Etymology

Etymology 1

From mother + ship.

Etymology 2

From Middle English modership, equivalent to mother + -ship.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.