Word.ws English Dictionary

eldmother

eldmother noun: one's grandmother or other female ancestor, or one's mother-in-law.

Noun

eldmother (plural eldmothers)

  1. (archaic, dialectal) One's grandmother or other female ancestor, or one's mother-in-law.
    • Item I gyve vnto my eldmother his wyffe my wyffes froke and a read petticote and a smoke.1571 November 5, John Heworth of Gatisheid, Will, in Wills and Inventories from the Registry at Durham (1835)
    • John Morpeth [...] saith that, on Sondaie last [...] the said John Robson said to the said Arthure, "Thou haiest a witch to thy eldmother[.]"1586 July 15, “Isabel Chamber against John Robson in Causa Defamationis”, in Depositions and Other Ecclesiastical Proceedings from the Courts ... of Durham, published 1845

Forms of eldmother

pluraleldmothers
alternative formeldermother

Origin of eldmother

From Middle English eldmoder, from Old English eald mōdor (“grandmother”), equivalent to eld (“old”) + mother. Cognate with Scots eldmoder, eldmother (“mother-in-law”), Old Frisian aldemōder.

Questions about eldmother

What does eldmother mean?
Eldmother means one's grandmother or other female ancestor, or one's mother-in-law.
What part of speech is eldmother?
Eldmother is a noun.
What is the plural of eldmother?
The plural of eldmother is eldmothers.

Words near eldmother in the dictionary

  1. eldfather
  2. eldfathers
  3. eldfellite
  4. elding
  5. Eldings
  6. eldmother
  7. eldmothers
  8. eldning
  9. Eldomery-Sutton syndrome
  10. Eldon
  11. Eldonian

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: eldmother (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:

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