foremother

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fore·moth·er

(fôr′mŭth′ər)

1. A woman ancestor.

2. A woman who is from an earlier time and has originated or contributed to a common tradition shared by a particular group.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

foremother

(ˈfɔːˌmʌðə)

(Sociology) a female ancestor

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

fore•moth•er

(ˈfɔrˌmʌð ər, ˈfoʊr-)

n.

a female ancestor.

[1575–85]

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Noun

foremother - a woman ancestor

ancestor, antecedent, ascendant, ascendent, root - someone from whom you are descended (but usually more remote than a grandparent)

foremother

noun

A person from whom one is descended:

ancestor, antecedent, ascendant, father, forebear, forefather, mother, parent, progenitor.

Archaic: predecessor.

Mentioned in ?

References in classic literature ?

My strain has remained clearer than the rest because for countless ages my foremothers were high priestesses--the sacred office descends from mother to daughter.

View in context

Instead of being the youngest of the family, it rather seemed to have aggregated into itself the ages, not only of these living specimens of the breed, but of all its forefathers and foremothers, whose united excellences and oddities were squeezed into its little body.

View in context

Though her own writing is now less well-known, Lane undeniably served as an intellectual foremother to a foundational generation of mid-century libertarian educators and activists.

Credo: The ROSE WILDER LANE Story

Inspiring Woman or Girl: Amna Al Haddad, teen weightlifter from the United Arab Emirates; pirate queen Grace O'Malley; and American foremother Eliza Hamilton.

Letters to luna

God, I felt you had designed them purposely for me, as you had once forged my foremother. Felt a tug of primordial hunger.

Eyes Opened, As Gods

Kadin does, however, refer to OBOS as the "feminist foremother" of this amazing new resource for trans people and their allies.

From the editors

"In Memoriam: Karen Dandurand, Founder and Foremother." By Nicole Tonkovich.

Tributes to Frances Smith Foster: recipient of the SSAWW'S Karen Dandurand lifetime achievement medal, 2012

Even those deeply opposed to the doctrine that has now come to be known as neo- liberalism would have a hard time denying its ubiquitous presence, and Mrs T played ideological foremother to Ronald Reagan in achieving this; no mean feat.

Thatcher was no messiah

Carol Margaret Davison laments the fact that Gilbert and Gubar ignore Ann Radcliffe, for in her view the gothic novelist is "unarguably the principal foremother of Gilbert & Gubar's theoretical paradigm" (209).

Federico, Annette R., ed.: Gilbert and Gubar's The Madwoman in the Attic After Thirty Years

Another minor concern is that of genealogy: while in the French context George Sand (1804-1876) is properly invoked as a foremother, the earliest Italian foremother cited is Sibilla Aleramo (1876-1960).

Women's Writing in Western Europe: Gender, Generation and Legacy

I can just see our foremother suffragists, many of whom were also abolitionists, beaming from war to ear at the thought that the foundation they laid for an inclusive, representative electorate has evolved to this momentous point.

Empowering the voter

Sappho as foremother takes her place alongside others: the speaker's biological mother Carmen; literary "mothers" Elizabeth Bishop, Marianne Moore, May Swenson and (yes!) Walt Whitman.