Word.ws English Dictionary

motherese

motherese noun: baby talk.

Noun

motherese (uncountable)

  1. Baby talk.
    • With its slow and exaggerated intonations, motherese speeds language learning by providing input that is easier for infants to process.2016, Joseph Henrich, chapter 13, in The Secret of Our Success […] , Princeton: Princeton University Press, →ISBN

Origin of motherese

From mother + -ese.

Questions about motherese

What does motherese mean?
Motherese means baby talk.
What part of speech is motherese?
Motherese is a noun.

Words near motherese in the dictionary

  1. mothereffer
  2. mothereffers
  3. mothereffing
  4. motherer
  5. motherers
  6. motherese
  7. motherf****r
  8. motherf****rs
  9. motherf**ker
  10. motherf**kers
  11. motherf**king

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: motherese (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: “motherese.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/motherese. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.