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
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
Mom, more widely known as Peggy, recently attended a family gathering that included an 8-month-old great-grandson named Charlie and Charlie’s other living great-grandmother, Jody.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 3, 2026
We all slept on the floor in one room, my mom and me, my aunt and my cousins, my uncle and my grandmother and my great-grandmother.
From "Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood" by Trevor Noah
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
Both of her great-grandmothers were painters; her father, Brian Simpson, is a smooth jazz pianist; and her mother, Beverley Simpson, is a collage artist.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 23, 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
The heavy work has all been done by countless great-grandmothers and their mates.
From "Watership Down: A Novel" by Richard Adams
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
