Word.ws English Dictionary

mother lode

mother lode noun: a large or rich vein of gold or of another precious mineral from which other branches extend.

Noun

mother lode (plural mother lodes)

  1. A large or rich vein of gold or of another precious mineral from which other branches extend.
    • Undeterred, reasoning from the coarseness of the gold that it had not traveled far, they had set out in search of the mother lode.1912, Jack London, “The Little Man”, in Smoke Bellew
  2. (broadly, idiomatic) Any source of valuable or useful material.
    • It is also letting them probe the genomes of other organisms for DNA that could turn out to be a mother lode for medicine.2000 April 10, Dick Thompson, “The Feds Step Up the Pace”, in Time
    • Emerging, but No Longer a Mother Lode of Profits [title]2014 March 4, Landon Thomas Jr., “Emerging, but No Longer a Mother Lode of Profits”, in New York Times

mother lode meaning in Tamil and Bengali

mother lode in Tamil

முதன்மைக் கனிமக்குவை

mother lode in Bengali

মূল্যবান, দরকারী উপকরণের যেকোনো উৎস

Forms of mother lode

pluralmother lodes
alternative formmother-lode
alternative formmotherlode

Origin of mother lode

Probably a calque of Spanish veta madre (“mother lode”).

Questions about mother lode

What does mother lode mean?
Mother lode means a large or rich vein of gold or of another precious mineral from which other branches extend.
What is mother lode in Tamil?
Mother lode in Tamil is முதன்மைக் கனிமக்குவை. See Mother lode meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is mother lode?
Mother lode is a noun.
What is the plural of mother lode?
The plural of mother lode is mother lodes.

Words near mother lode in the dictionary

  1. mother language
  2. mother languages
  3. mother liquor
  4. mother liquors
  5. mother load
  6. mother lode
  7. mother lodes
  8. mother may I
  9. Mother Monster
  10. mother naked
  11. mother nature

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mother lode (page history and authors); mother lode (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); mother lode (Bengali Wiktionary) (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-mother lode.ogg, En-au-mother lode.ogg.

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