mother of all

phrase

Etymology

Calque of Arabic أُمّ (ʔumm, “mother (of)”). Popularized and given its current sense by Saddam Hussein's claim that the impending Gulf War would be the أُمّ المَعَارِك (ʔumm al-maʕārik, “mother of (all) battles”), though mother had long been used in somewhat similar senses in English, and other familial terms are used with the same meaning, like granddaddy (of all traffic jams) and father (of all battles).

Definitions

1
Used before a plural noun to form a compound noun having the sense of
Used before a plural noun to form a compound noun having the sense of: the greatest or largest of (its kind); the most epic example of (its kind).
- , etc.
- Near-synonym: Big One
- Driving to a dinner engagement, a Parisian woman gets stuck in the mother of all traffic jams, offers a ride to a handsome pedestrian, and enters a fleeting affair that catches both of them by surprise.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for mother of all. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA