mother of vinegar

noun

1. mother.

Word History and Origins

Origin of mother of vinegar¹

First recorded in 1595–1605

Example Sentences

My “mother of vinegar” — science geeks know her as acetobactor aceti — is turning red wine excess into red wine vinegar, thanks to a big red cookbook: “Canal House Cooks Every Day.”

Read more on Seattle Times

The longer fermentation period allows for a culture of acetic acid bacteria, known as the “mother” of vinegar, to form in the wine or other source liquid.

Read more on Seattle Times

Vin′egar-cru′et, a glass bottle for holding vinegar; Vinegarette′, a vinaigrette; Vin′egar-plant, the microscopic fungus which produces acetous fermentation—found in two forms known as mother of vinegar and flowers of vinegar.—adjs.

Read more on Project Gutenberg

Were I a great person, I would with the greatest zeal make buttons–or deliveries–or books–or Nuremberg wares–or wars–or right good institutions, merely from cursed ennui, that mother of vinegar to all vices and virtues which peep forth under ermine and stars of orders.

Read more on Project Gutenberg

His sweetened blood began gradually with this mother of vinegar to grow sour towards this Mat, whose cold, ironical gallantry toward the honest Agatha of itself exasperated him, though her phlegmatic, and, as it were, married pulse, beat in his absence and in his presence at the same rate.

Read more on Project Gutenberg