Word.ws English Dictionary

motherings

motherings is the plural of mothering.

Meaning of mothering

Noun

mothering (countable and uncountable, plural motherings)

  1. The nurturing of a child by its mother.
    • The unification or bringing together of disparate things […] which Mrs Ramsay seeks to achieve by marryings and motherings […]1996, Rachel Bowlby, Feminist Destinations and Further Essays on Virginia Woolf
  2. The protective behavior of a mother towards her child.
  3. Nurturing or protective behavior reminiscent of that performed by a literal mother.
    • The institution in the past has done monumental work harboring the homeless, mothering the homeless, mothering the motherless, caring for the poor and dependent1912, “The Mother's Pension Law”, in The Journal of the International Brotherhood of Boiler Makers, volume 24, page 1025

Questions about motherings

What is motherings the plural of?
Motherings is the plural of mothering.

Words near motherings in the dictionary

  1. Mothering Sunday
  2. mothering up
  3. mothering-cake
  4. mothering-cakes
  5. motheringly
  6. motherings
  7. motherish
  8. motherism
  9. motherist
  10. motherists
  11. motherkin

Source and license

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