grandmother
Americannoun
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grandmothers
plural
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the mother of one's father or mother.
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a female ancestor.
noun
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the mother of one's father or mother
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(often plural) a female ancestor
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(often capital) a familiar term of address for an old woman
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See egg 1
Usage
What does grandmother mean? A grandmother is the mother of a person’s parent. When a mother’s child has their own children, that mother becomes a grandmother. Less commonly, grandmother can be used in a general way to refer to a female ancestor, as in This would not be possible without the contributions of those who came before us, our many grandmothers. Should grandmother be capitalized?Grandmother should be capitalized when it’s used as a proper name, as in Please tell Grandmother that I miss her. But grandmother does not need to be capitalized when it’s simply used as a way to refer to her, as in Please tell my grandmother that I miss her. Example: It doesn’t matter what you call your grandmother, as long as you call her.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of grandmother
late Middle English word dating back to 1375–1425; see origin at grand-, mother 1
Explanation
Your grandmother is your mom or dad's mother. In many traditional cultures, a grandmother lives with her adult child's family and helps raise her grandchildren. Everyone has two biological grandmothers, maternal (your mother's mother) and paternal (your father's mother). If you're lucky, your grandmother is someone you get to know well. One of the most well-known fictional grandmothers appears in "Little Red Riding Hood," the fairy tale in which a wolf disguises himself as Red Riding Hood's grandmother in an attempt to fool her into being eaten.
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:
Celebrity Traitors star and comedian Joe Lycett has paid colourful tribute to the Welsh grandmother who went viral on TikTok after getting caught in shop shutters and being hoisted into the air.
From BBC ● Oct. 28, 2026
Do my daughters have any legal recourse to recover the $20,000 their grandmother intended for their college education?
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 27, 2026
I told him I was planning to be more like my spirited grandmother, who had never apologized for her age and lived to be 94.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 23, 2026
“Of course, his grandmother was a very funny woman,” says Mr. O’Dowd.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 23, 2026
Then the goslings waddled over and started inspecting their robotic grandmother.
From "The Wild Robot Protects" by Peter Brown
Dima described scenes of "girls, boys, parents, grandmothers" walking down the streets of the red zone carrying suitcases and bags, returning to their flats to see what they could retrieve.
From BBC ● Oct. 29, 2026
Russians from all walks of life began reaching out: employees of state energy companies; agents from Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB; even anxiety-ridden grandmothers of Russian soldiers.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 16, 2026
Salterelli has seen cases where competing grandmothers both want to be guardians and a custody battle ensues.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 26, 2026
Add to that the centuries-old cliches of Italian mothers and grandmothers showing their love through food, and it's a perfect storm.
From BBC ● Jul. 25, 2026
There was Earth and there the coming war, and there hundreds of thousands of mothers or grandmothers or fathers or brothers or aunts or uncles or cousins.
From "The Martian Chronicles" by Ray Bradbury
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