surrogate mother

American  

noun

surrogate mothers plural

1. a person who acts in the place of another person's biological mother.

2. an animal that is given another's offspring to raise.

3. Medicine/Medical. a woman who helps a couple to have a child by carrying to term an embryo conceived by the couple and transferred to her uterus, or by being inseminated with the man's sperm and either donating the embryo for transfer to the woman's uterus or carrying it to term.

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surrogate mother British  

/ ˈsʌrəɡəsɪ /

noun

1. a woman who bears a child on behalf of a couple unable to have a child, either by artificial insemination from the man or implantation of an embryo from the woman

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• surrogacy
  noun

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• surrogate mothers
  plural

Etymology

Origin of surrogate mother

First recorded in 1975–80

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

surrogate mother

A number of CDU politicians had urged Spahn to give up his leadership post, arguing that his decision to use a surrogate mother despite the party's clear position was untenable.

From Barron's ● Jul. 18, 2026

Barrie Drewitt-Barlow, a property developer, made headlines in 1999 when he and his partner at the time, Tony, became known as Britain's first gay fathers, having become parents through a surrogate mother.

From BBC ● May 8, 2026

So being a single father by choice is a rarer phenomenon, and doing so via gestational surrogacy, in which the surrogate mother bears no genetic link to the child she carries, is rarer yet.

From Slate ● Feb. 23, 2026

Chloe Dalton tried to prove the Roman writer wrong when she became a surrogate mother to a baby hare she discovered outside her house in rural England.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 3, 2025

Next to the dead surrogate mother was a young bonobo.

From "Endangered" by Eliot Schrefer