great-grandmother

[greyt-gran-muhth-er, -grand-, -gram-]

noun

1. a grandmother of one's father or mother.

Word History and Origins

Origin of great-grandmother¹

First recorded in 1520–30

Example Sentences

His own great-grandmother’s story of discovering a grave there indicating a body buried underground—not wrapped in fur and sent out to sea in the Inuit style—particularly stuck with Kamookak.

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“My great-grandmother,” my mom said.

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“Why didn’t you tell me from the start that your great-grandmother was here when they brought Cleopatra’s Needle to America?”

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Skies, who adopted her great-grandmother's name, said she co-wrote Madeline, Sleepwalking, Let You W/in, which she described as "my fave", as well as Dallas Major, Relapse and Beg For Me.

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“This love of cooking has spanned generations in my family. My great-grandmother, an excellent cook herself, was once taken to a market where she encountered a man carrying a green snake. It was said that if she ran her right hand down the length of the snake that she would be an amazing cook for life, and she was!”

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When To Use

What does great-grandmother mean?

A great-grandmother is the mother of a person’s grandparent (the grandmother of a person’s parent).When a mother’s child has their own children, that mother becomes a grandmother. When those children have their own children, she becomes a great-grandmother.Should great-grandmother be capitalized?Great-grandmother should be capitalized when it’s used as a proper name, as in Please tell Great-grandmother that I miss her. But great-grandmother does not need to be capitalized when it’s simply used as a way to refer to her, as in Please tell my great-grandmother that I miss her. Example: My kids were lucky enough to get to know three of their great-grandmothers.