grandmother
Pluralgrandmothers
- 1The mother of one of a person's parents.
Her grandmother taught her to knit during the long winter evenings.
He inherited his grandmother's love of gardening and her old hand tools.
Oppositegrandfather
Note
The word is a Middle English compound, spelled graundmodre or granmoder, built from grand- and mother along the lines of French grand-mère. It displaced an older English pair, eldmother and eldermother, whose first element marked age rather than rank. Grand- here signals one generation's remove, and the same prefix shapes grandfather and grandparent.
- 2A female ancestor from whom a family, people, or line is descended.
The clan revered a distant grandmother said to have tamed the first horses.
Genealogists traced the entire bloodline back to a common grandmother born five centuries ago.
Similarancestor, foremother, forebear
Oppositedescendant
- 3A respectful way of referring to the ayahuasca vine or its brew as a wise spirit offering guidance, in Amazonian shamanism and related contexts.
Participants in the retreat offered tobacco to Grandmother before sharing the brew at dusk.
He described how Grandmother surfaced difficult memories he had buried for decades.
Similarayahuasca
Note
Used as a name, it behaves like one: capitalized and without an article, so participants drink with Grandmother rather than with the grandmother. Looser writing turns it into an epithet instead, as when AJ Murillo's The Beginner's Guide to Ego Death (2025) calls ayahuasca "the mystical grandmother of the psychedelic family." Keep the capital and drop the article when the reverential sense is meant.
Practice
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Origin
From Middle English graundmodre, grauntmoder, or granmoder, formed from grand- plus mother and comparable to French grand-mère. It replaced the earlier eldmother or eldermother.