mother of all
14
7.8
- idiom
- Informal
:
madre de todas
- What about the mother of all messes?
- the mother of all battles
- the mother of all monsters
- the mother of all photo ops
So for instance, when the Iraqi President Hussein said this is going to be the mother of all wars, he meant the paradigmatic war.
- So for instance, when the Iraqi President Hussein said this is going to be the mother of all wars, he meant the paradigmatic war.
- the United States decides that the way to handle this, to defeat the Russians quickly is by imposing on on the greatest, the mother of all sanctions.
- So so thank you for making the very clear point that speed of light uses the symbol C because it is the mother of all constants.
- If you rely on the mother of all inhumane weapons, and I have security concerns, why should I commit not to acquire other WMDS?
- You know, we dropped the big the, the big mother of all bombs.
Examples
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It's the home of the mother of all burgers.
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This is the mother of all challenges; no one has ever faced anything like it before.
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And then we have the mother of all lies.
Blog text (3) -
You know, we dropped the big the, the big mother of all bombs.
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You want to know what the mother of all bubbles was?
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This is the mother of all promises.
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"The mother of all battles is upon us.
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The mother of all evil is speculation.
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But the financial markets are now setting up for the mother of all collapses.
Blog text (3) -
Well, let's just say that 2012 has been the mother of all monsoons.
Blog text (18)
Synonyms
70
1.0
Better than all others in quality or importance
How Extreme
Surface Forms
Morphology
mother + of + all
The noun 'mother' is used metaphorically here to signal an archetype or source, so a learner might infer that 'mother of all X' means an extreme or prototypical instance; however this superlative sense is a figurative extension rather than a straightforward compositional meaning of 'mother' + 'of' + 'all'. Because the connection is partial and relies on idiomatic/metaphorical use that is not fully predictable or universal across languages, it is only partially transparent to a B1 learner.
Etymology
Mother of all uses the image of a strong mother as the main or biggest example of something. So calling something the mother of all means it is the 'largest' or 'most extreme' of its kind.