Word.ws English Dictionary

mom-and-pop

mom-and-pop adjective: small and unsophisticated, typically because operated by a couple or a family. Also the alternative form of mom and pop.

Adjective (1)

mom-and-pop (not comparable)

  1. (Canada, US, typically of a business) Small and unsophisticated, typically because operated by a couple or a family.
    • Mom-and-pop diners are disappearing from American streets and being replaced by bland corporate giants.
    Synonyms:
    ma-and-pa

Adjective (2) capitalized: Mom-and-Pop

Mom-and-Pop (not comparable)

  1. Alternative letter-case form of mom-and-pop.
    • That’s how we discovered New England: back roads, Mom-and-Pop diners, historic markers and all.1972 August 24, Virginia Payette, “Little Tourist Homes Have Great Appeal”, in The Lincoln Star, 70th year, number 281, Lincoln, Neb., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 4, column 1
    • At first glance, Lincoln seemed caught in a time warp—a place of 1930s tourist cabins and Mom-and-Pop diners where one could get honest-to-goodness milk shakes, made in a blender with real ice cream.2003, Alston Chase, “Ah, Wilderness!”, in Harvard and the Unabomber: The Education of an American Terrorist, New York, N.Y.: W. W. Norton & Company, →ISBN, part 1 (The Unabomber: Crimes and...

Noun capitalized: Mom-and-Pop

Mom-and-Pop (plural Mom-and-Pops)

  1. Alternative letter-case form of mom and pop.
    • The new retail marketing companies, being highly profit-oriented, will be interested in the “cream” of the marketplace. The “cream” will not be the Mom-and-Pops and corner service stations of rural Chesterfield County.1976, Charles R. Jackson, quotee, “The Southern Caucus Testifies”, in Patricia Maloney Markun, editor, compiled by Michael E. Canes, Witnesses for Oil: The Case Against Dismemberment: Congressional...
    • Eventually, it actually happened as the neighborhood improved, rents got jacked-up and the Mom-and-Pops and importer/exporters gave way to restaurants, bars and coffee shops. The “hood” had now become hip.2014, Michael Domino, “A Gypsy Night”, in Park Avenue to Park Bench: Short Stories, New York, N.Y.: Conscience Circle, →ISBN, page 44

Also used as

mom-and-pop is also the alternative form of mom and pop.

Synonyms of mom-and-pop

Forms of mom-and-pop

Adjective
alternative formmom and pop
alternative formMom and Pop
alternative formMom-and-Pop
Noun
pluralmom-and-pops
pluralMom-and-Pops

Questions about mom-and-pop

What does mom-and-pop mean?
Mom-and-pop means small and unsophisticated, typically because operated by a couple or a family.
What part of speech is mom-and-pop?
Mom-and-pop can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near mom-and-pop in the dictionary

  1. mom bods
  2. mom cave
  3. mom caves
  4. mom jeans
  5. mom test
  6. mom-and-pop
  7. mom-and-pops
  8. mom-in-law
  9. moma
  10. Momaday
  11. Momadays

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mom-and-pop (page history and authors); Mom-and-Pop (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: “mom-and-pop.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mom-and-pop. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.