Word.ws English Dictionary

Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa proper noun: a nun who worked among the poor for many decades in India.

Proper noun

Mother Teresa

  1. A nun who worked among the poor for many decades in India.

Noun

Mother Teresa (plural Mother Teresas)

  1. A person who is completely unselfish to the point of being saintly.
    • To the degree we have Jesus within us, we are all gifted to be a Mother Teresa.1979, Mary Jane Linn, Matthew Linn, Dennis Linn, Healing the Dying: Releasing People to Die, page 1
    • Do you know someone who comes close to being a Mother Teresa?1998, Arnold B. Cheyney, People of Purpose: 80 People Who Have Made a Difference, page 149

Examples of Mother Teresa in a sentence

  • I am not saying that we should all be a Mother Teresa.2008, Johnny Ong, Don't Live Your Live in One Day, page 28:
  • Imagine a woman, Marcy, who sees herself as self-sacrificing, a veritable Mother Teresa who consistently puts the needs of others before her own.2009 December 2, Madeleine L. Van Hecke, Blind Spots: Why Smart People Do Dumb Things, Prometheus Books, →ISBN, page 91:
  • A Mother Teresa is not only offering her services, but also sacrificing her well-being and personal safety to help the needy.2016 May 6, Robert Sack, A Geographical Guide to the Real and the Good, Routledge, →ISBN, page 181:
  • As a leader you should ask yourself, “What are you a Mother Teresa of?”2011, Louis Faust, Ruma Bose, Mother Teresa, CEO: Unexpected Principles for Practical Leadership, page 18:

Forms of Mother Teresa

pluralMother Teresas

Origin of Mother Teresa

Appellativisation of Mother Teresa, an Albanian-Indian Roman Catholic nun and missionary.

Words formed from Mother Teresa

Questions about Mother Teresa

What does Mother Teresa mean?
Mother Teresa means a nun who worked among the poor for many decades in India.
How do you use Mother Teresa in a sentence?
I am not saying that we should all be a Mother Teresa.
What part of speech is Mother Teresa?
Mother Teresa can be a proper noun or a noun.

Words near Mother Teresa in the dictionary

  1. mother sauces
  2. mother ship
  3. mother ships
  4. mother superior
  5. mother superiors
  6. Mother Teresa
  7. Mother Teresas
  8. Mother Theresa
  9. Mother Theresas
  10. Mother Thumb and her four daughters
  11. mother tongue

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Mother Teresa (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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Cite this entry: “Mother Teresa.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mother_teresa. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.