mother country
3
3.5
- noun
- /ˈmʌðər ˈkʌntri/
:
país natal
- "Never let us lose sight of the fact that our interest lies in a perpetual connection with our mother country," he urged.
Examples
-
The currencies of many now-independent nations continue to include the language of the old mother country along with the indigenous language.
Academic text (1991) -
Ethnic Chinese from Hong Kong, Singapore, Vietnam, and Macau have long had access to work in their respective mother countries.
Academic text (2008) -
I think that we owe a lot to your mother country, Mr. Miller.
-
"Help rebuild the mother country, make your fortune."
-
In her case, there is no doubt that the 'mother country,' imperial England, had restored her youth and vigor.
Academic text (2003) -
Regular contacts between the many Polish emigrants to America and their mother country substantially strengthened the positive perception of the United States.
Academic text (1990) -
If the whole family—grandparents, parents, and young kids—moves from their mother country, all bets are off.
Blog text (8) -
The Tamil press maintained the ties of the local Tamil community with the mother country—Tamil Nadu in India.
Academic text (1992) -
Brooke's travel journals, written at a time when ties between the former colony and mother country remained strong, therefore deserve more attention than they have hitherto received from either his biographers or Canadian literary scholars and historians.
Academic text (2013) -
Many immigrants feel a strong connection to their mother country even after living abroad for decades.
Synonyms
177
3.1
The country where someone is born or where they feel they belong
22
4.6
The country where you were born or that you feel strongly connected to
12
7.4
The country where a person is born or feels strong loyalty to
11
2.7
A country where a person was born or something was made
9
3.6
A country where a person was born and still feels at home
5
3.4
The country a person or their family came from before moving
1
4.4
The land where you are born and grow up
1
7.9
A person's native country that they love
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly inferable from combining 'mother' as a metaphor for origin/source with 'country' — i.e., the country of one's birth or strong national attachment. This maternal-country metaphor is cross-linguistically common (e.g., 'motherland') and follows a transparent compound-noun pattern, so a B1 learner who knows both words would likely understand it.
Etymology
Mother country comes from the simple image of a mother who 'gave birth' to people or colonies and then looked after them, so the country that started or protected a group was called its mother country. So today mother country means the country where someone was born or the country they feel a strong connection to.