Word.ws English Dictionary

motherlode

motherlode is the alternative form of mother lode.

Meaning of mother lode

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

Forms of motherlode

pluralmotherlodes

Questions about motherlode

What is motherlode the alternative form of?
Motherlode is the alternative form of mother lode.

Words near motherlode in the dictionary

  1. motherliness
  2. motherling
  3. motherlings
  4. motherload
  5. motherloads
  6. motherlode
  7. motherlodes
  8. motherlove
  9. motherlover
  10. motherlovers
  11. motherloving

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: motherlode (page history and authors); mother lode (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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