founding mother
Syllables: found·ing moth·erUK/ˌfaʊndɪŋ ˈmʌðə//ˌfaʊndɪŋ ˈmʌðɚ/
founding mother noun: a woman who founded (established or started) something.
Noun
founding mother (plural founding mothers)
- A woman who founded (established or started) something.
- Finally there is a comprehensive, well-documented life of founding mother Elizabeth Cady Stanton: In Her Own Right, by Elisabeth Griffith. Griffith focuses upon both the life and the social atmosphere which led to the beginnings of the first wave of American feminism.1984 December 29, Michael Bronski, “Hot Off The Presses”, in Gay Community News, volume 12, number 25, page 10
- She (Audrey Lorde) is a member of the founding collective of Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press and a founding mother of SISA, Sisterhood in Support of Sisters in South Africa.1986, Johnnetta B. Cole, All American Women: Lines that Divide, Ties that Bind, →ISBN
Examples of founding mother in a sentence
- There could even be a case made for treating Jane Harrison as a founding mother of social science (Beard, 2000).2003 April 21, Sara Delamont, Feminist Sociology, SAGE, →ISBN:
- The initial founding mother, Eve, becomes a paradigmatic figure in later Jewish and Christian exegesis[…]2020 October 21, Kathleen Gallagher Elkins, Mary, Mother of Martyrs: How Motherhood Became Self-Sacrifice in Early Christianity, Wipf and...
Forms of founding mother
| plural | founding mothers |
|---|
Origin of founding mother
From founding (“who or that founds (establishes, starts) or founded”) + mother, modelled after founding father.
Words that rhyme with founding mother
Questions about founding mother
- What does founding mother mean?
- Founding mother means a woman who founded (established or started) something.
- How do you use founding mother in a sentence?
- There could even be a case made for treating Jane Harrison as a founding mother of social science (Beard, 2000).
- What part of speech is founding mother?
- Founding mother is a noun.
- How do you pronounce founding mother?
- Founding mother is pronounced /ˌfaʊndɪŋ ˈmʌðə/ (UK).
- What is the plural of founding mother?
- The plural of founding mother is founding mothers.
Words near founding mother in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: founding mother (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: En-us-founding mother.oga.
Cite this entry: “founding mother.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/founding_mother. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.