Word.ws English Dictionary

allomother

/ˈæləˌmʌðə(ɹ)/US/ˈæləˌmʌðɚ/

allomother noun: a human or other creature that provides some maternal care for the young born of another.

Noun

allomother (plural allomothers)

  1. A human or other creature that provides some maternal care for the young born of another.
    • Within hours of birth, baby langurs are spirited away from their mothers. They spend up to 50 percent of daylight hours passed from allomother to allomother2000, Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Mother Nature: Maternal Instincts and how They Shape the Human Species, page 162
    • Among the !Kung foragers of the Kalahari, babies are held by a father, grandmother, older sibling or some other allomother maybe 25 percent of the time.2009 March 3, Natalie Angier, “In a Helpless Baby, the Roots of Our Social Glue”, in New York Times
    Synonyms:
    othermother

Verb

allomother (third-person singular simple present allomothers, present participle allomothering, simple past and past participle allomothered)

  1. (transitive) To provide maternal care for another creature's young.

Synonyms of allomother

Forms of allomother

Noun
pluralallomothers
Verb
third-person singular presentallomothers
present participleallomothering
past participleallomothered
pastallomothered

Origin of allomother

From allo- + mother.

Questions about allomother

What does allomother mean?
Allomother means a human or other creature that provides some maternal care for the young born of another.
What part of speech is allomother?
Allomother can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce allomother?
Allomother is pronounced /ˈæləˌmʌðə(ɹ)/ (UK).
What is the plural of allomother?
The plural of allomother is allomothers.

Words near allomother in the dictionary

  1. allomorphism
  2. allomorphisms
  3. allomorphite
  4. allomorphs
  5. allomorphy
  6. allomother
  7. allomothered
  8. allomothering
  9. allomothers
  10. allomucic acid
  11. allonamide

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: allomother (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-allomother.wav.

Cite this entry: “allomother.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/allomother. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.