# grandmother

Pronunciation: US say "GRAND-muh-thur" /ˈɡɹæn(d)ˌmʌðɚ/; UK say "GRAND-muh-thuh" /ˈɡɹæn(d)ˌmʌðə(r)/

## Noun

1. The mother of one of a person's parents.
   - Simple: The mother of your father or mother.
   - _Her grandmother taught her to knit during the long winter evenings._
   - _He inherited his grandmother's love of gardening and her old hand tools._
2. A female ancestor from whom a family, people, or line is descended.
   - Simple: A woman from long ago that a whole family or people came from.
   - _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._
3. A respectful way of referring to the ayahuasca vine or its brew as a wise spirit offering guidance, in Amazonian shamanism and related contexts.
   - Simple: A respectful name for the ayahuasca vine or its brew, treated as a wise, guiding spirit.
   - _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._

## 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.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/grandmother (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).