Word.ws English Dictionary

mother wits

mother wits is the plural of mother wit.

Meaning of mother wit

Noun

mother wit (countable and uncountable, plural mother wits)

  1. (uncountable) Inborn intelligence; innate good sense.
    • Kate. Where did you study all this goodly speech?
      Petr. It is extempore, from my mother wit.c. 1590–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Taming of the Shrew”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
  2. (countable, obsolete) A person with such intelligence.
    • From iygging vaines of riming mother wits,
      And ſuch conceits as clownage keepes in pay,
      Weele lead you to the ſtately tent of War,
      Where you ſhall heare the Scythian Tamburlaine:
      Threatning the world with high aſtounding tearms
      And ſcourging kingdomes with his conquering ſword.c. 1587–1588 (date written), [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC...

Questions about mother wits

What is mother wits the plural of?
Mother wits is the plural of mother wit.

Words near mother wits in the dictionary

  1. Mother Thumb and her four daughters
  2. mother tongue
  3. mother tongues
  4. mother up
  5. mother wit
  6. mother wits
  7. mother world
  8. mother worlds
  9. mother wound
  10. Mother Xmas
  11. Mother Xmases

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mother wits (page history and authors); mother wit (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: “mother wits.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mother_wits. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.