Mother Goose
3
4.5
- proper noun
- /ˈmʌðər ɡus/
- Literature
:
Madre Ganso
- Because he's ugly as sin, he specializes in roles that require masks, such as Humpty Dumpty during Mother Goose Days.
- Mother Goose nursery rhymes
- Mother Goose book
Examples
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I looked for an image that included the Quran, Holy Bible, and The Collected Works of Mother Goose, but couldn't find any.
Blog text (8) -
Yeah, and I'm Mother Goose.
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They don't call me Mother Goose for nothing.
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I'm Mother Goose.
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Mother Goose?
Fiction book (1999) -
Mother Goose and Grimm
Academic text (2012) -
Maddy is beside Herb in the Lazy-Boy, flipping the pages of the worn Mother Goose book, the same one Herb used to read to Lindsey.
Fiction book (1992) -
In Maurice Ravel's Mother Goose suite (Ma mère l'oye), the winds told stories, usually in solo turns.
Blog text (32) -
In 1697, Charles Perrault's collection, Tales of Mother Goose—which included such old favorites as "The Sleeping Beauty" and "Cinderella"—was read in the court of King Louis XIV.
Academic text (2013) -
Many children love the nursery rhymes written by Mother Goose and enjoy hearing her stories.
Surface Forms
Morphology
mother + Goose
This is a conventional proper name for a cultural/literary figure (the imagined author of nursery rhymes) rather than a compositional phrase; a learner who knows 'mother' and 'goose' would likely infer a literal or odd image (a goose who is a mother) rather than the conventional role. The meaning is culturally specific and not predictable from the constituent words, so it is not derivable by an average B1 learner.
Etymology
Mother Goose may come from the simple picture of an old woman and a goose, with Mother and Goose giving the image of a woman who tells stories to children. One early book in French called 'Mère l'Oye' helped make this picture famous, so today Mother Goose is the imagined 'author' of nursery rhymes and fairy tales.