great-grandmother
Americannoun
-
great-grandmothers
plural
Usage
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.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of great-grandmother
First recorded in 1520–30
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Winterich’s own children, she told me, treasure a recording of their great-grandmother reading a story, because they would never otherwise have heard what she sounded like.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 29, 2026
"I think people... want foods that are whole foods, the way we used to do them, the foods that their grandmother or great-grandmother made," Childers said.
From Barron's ● Sep. 3, 2026
That light is what my great-grandmother recognized in Dolly all those years ago.
From Salon ● Aug. 26, 2026
"It's not just about what's in your genome as an individual," Gribble said, because "your health potentially depends on the health and environment of your mom and grandmother and great-grandmother."
From Science Daily ● Aug. 19, 2026
Except for the funerals I can’t say I remember my great-aunt and great-grandmother being under the same roof or together under the same piece of sky.
From "Gone Crazy in Alabama" by Rita Williams-Garcia
For these survivors—the grandmothers and great-grandmothers who populate many romantic fantasies—“Italy” seldom meant idyllic country vistas and cardiologists’ dream culinary joys.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 13, 2026
McDonald’s performance opens a window onto the grandmothers and great-grandmothers whose lives were even more tragically curtailed.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 31, 2025
And in 1917, her heavily pregnant great-grandmothers “swelled with orange heat, like the fruiting of giant persimmons.”
From Washington Post ● Apr. 27, 2023
My career has been fostered not only by my relatives — my aunts, my mother, my grandmothers and my great-grandmothers — but also by other women who’re weavers in the Navajo Nation.
From New York Times ● Apr. 20, 2023
Maybe for once our great-grandmothers would stop acting like Vonetta and Fern and behave like sisters.
From "Gone Crazy in Alabama" by Rita Williams-Garcia
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
