Word.ws English Dictionary

mother-hive

mother-hive noun: the principal or source hive of a colony of bees.

Noun

mother-hive (plural mother-hives)

  1. the principal or source hive of a colony of bees
    • A mother-hive of bees is 24 pence in value.1909, Arthur Wade-Evans, Welsh Medieval Law
  2. (idiomatic) a location similarly serving as the source of a group of people
    • [John Whitman] came over in the True Love in 1640 to America and lived in Weymouth, Mass., which place became the mother-hive of the New Englanders of the name.1882, Walt Whitman, Specimen Days

Forms of mother-hive

pluralmother-hives
alternative formmother hive

Questions about mother-hive

What does mother-hive mean?
Mother-hive means the principal or source hive of a colony of bees.
What part of speech is mother-hive?
Mother-hive is a noun.
What is the plural of mother-hive?
The plural of mother-hive is mother-hives.

Words near mother-hive in the dictionary

  1. mother-fuckers
  2. mother-hen
  3. mother-henned
  4. mother-henning
  5. mother-hens
  6. mother-hive
  7. mother-hives
  8. mother-in-law
  9. mother-in-law apartment
  10. mother-in-law apartments
  11. mother-in-law door

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mother-hive (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.

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