Mother Shipton

/ ˈʃɪptən /

noun

1. a day-flying noctuid moth, Callistege mi, mottled brown in colour and named from a fancied resemblance between its darker marking and a haggish profile

Word History and Origins

Origin of Mother Shipton¹

named after Mother Shipton, a legendary prophetess in 15th-century Yorkshire

Example Sentences

This year's decorative theme is myths and legends, apt for a place whose streets have known such real-life characters as famed soothsayer Mother Shipton and Robert the Hermit.

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Crowds of pretended fortune-tellers, and astrologers and cunning men, were soon in good business, and their trade became so generally practised, that they had signs denoting their profession over their doors, with inscriptions announcing, “Here lives a fortune-teller,”—“Here you may have your nativity cast;” and the head of Friar Bacon, Mother Shipton, or Merlin, were their usual signs: and if any unfortunate man of grave appearance, and wearing a black cloak, went abroad, he was immediately assailed by the mob as a necromancer, and supplicated to reveal futurity.

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Shipton, ship′ton, n. usually 'Mother Shipton,' a famous prophetess of popular English tradition, born near Knaresborough in 1488.

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“Carriages without horses shall go,” is the “prophecy” attributed to that mythical fifteenth century pythoness, Mother Shipton; really the ex post facto forgery of Charles Hindley, the second-hand bookseller, in 1862.

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The second part of Mother Shipton’s Prophecies, newly made by a gentleman of good quality, foretelling what was done four hundred years ago, and A Pleasant Ballad of a bloody fight seen i’ th’ air, which, the astrologers say, portends scarcity of fowl this year.

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