mother of all

English

Etymology

Calque of Arabic أُمّ (ʔumm, “mother (of)”). Popularized and given its current sense by Saddam Hussein's claim that the impending Gulf War would be the أُمّ المَعَارِك (ʔumm al-maʕārik, “mother of (all) battles”),^[1] though mother had long been used in somewhat similar senses in English,^[2] and other familial terms are used with the same meaning, like granddaddy (of all traffic jams) and father (of all battles).

Phrase

mother of all —

(colloquial) Used before a plural noun to form a compound noun having the sense of: the greatest or largest of (its kind); the most epic example of (its kind).
Synonyms: father of all, granddaddy of all, grandmammy of all (etc)

Near-synonym: Big One
- 2003 December 26, “2003 Movie Guide”, in Christian Science Monitor:
  Driving to a dinner engagement, a Parisian woman gets stuck in the mother of all traffic jams, offers a ride to a handsome pedestrian, and enters a fleeting affair that catches both of them by surprise.
- 2006, Jean Chatzky, “Get the Scoop”, in Money, vol. 35.8:
  Five mail-order ice creams. Four pregnant women. Welcome to the mother of all taste tests.
- 2024 October 30, Laurent Belsie, “Surprisingly, Wall Street doesn’t seem to care who gets elected. So far, at least.”, in The Christian Science Monitor‎^[1]:
  “[Donald Trump's tariff proposal] is a prescription for the mother of all stagflations,” Larry Summers, Treasury secretary during the Clinton administration, told Bloomberg TV back in June.

Derived terms

References

^ The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (2006), page 1327, "mother of all"
^ Douglas Harper (2001–2024) “mother”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.

[1] The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (2006), page 1327, "mother of all"

[2] Douglas Harper (2001–2024) “mother”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.

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