mother figure
3
3.2
- noun
- /ˈmʌðər ˈfɪɡər/
:
figura materna
- After losing her own mother, Sarah found solace in her aunt, who served as a loving mother figure in her life.
- search for a mother figure
And also a mother figure personality that I take on as well.
- And also a mother figure personality that I take on as well.
- And like Laura's mom became like a mother figure to me.
- There's just a point in a boy's life where he's going to want to push away from that mother figure and find another, another person.
- And that anima figure for the man comes mostly from his earliest relationships and childhood, like the mother figure generally could be a sibling.
Examples
-
And like Laura's mom became like a mother figure to me.
-
Prince Genji's love experience revolves to a great extent around his unconscious search for a mother figure.
Academic text (1992) -
Oh, they need a father or mother figure.
Blog text (1) -
And also a mother figure personality that I take on as well.
-
For Woolf, the search for a mother figure took on a greater significance.
Academic text (1995) -
She's broke, but we're kind of impoverished, and she is a great artist and a mother figure.
Academic text (2015) -
She's an older woman, who's always been like a mother figure to both Mark and me.
Blog text (29) -
One example of this logic in GBS is Major's wife, who is introduced as a mythic mother figure.
Academic text (1995) -
Jodie Reagan, manager and de facto mother figure for both bands, looks over and groans.
Blog text (10) -
She became a mother figure to many children in the neighborhood, providing guidance and support.
Synonyms
24
9.8
A woman who is a mother or cares for children
2
4.3
A woman who cares for someone like a mother, often with or instead of their own mother
2
6.1
A woman who cares for and helps people living together, like in a dormitory
2
6.7
A woman who looks after and supports a group of children or young people
1
5.1
A person who cares for and protects others and often worries about them
A woman who cares for a child who is not her own
How Supportive
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly derived from combining 'mother' (a maternal person) with 'figure' (a prominent person in a role), so a learner who knows both words can infer it refers to a person who provides motherly guidance or care. This noun-noun compositional pattern is cross-linguistically common (e.g. Spanish figura materna), making the expression readily understandable to B1 learners.
Etymology
The phrase mother figure uses the image of a mother and the word figure for a person who fills that role. It comes from seeing a woman give 'care' and 'support' like a mother, so it now means a woman who provides mother-like help even if she is not the child's real mother.