Word.ws English Dictionary

mother-hives

mother-hives is the plural of mother-hive.

Meaning of mother-hive

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

Questions about mother-hives

What is mother-hives the plural of?
Mother-hives is the plural of mother-hive.

Words near mother-hives in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mother-hives (page history and authors); 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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