What Does Mother Country Mean

Female parent country

What's the significant of the phrase 'Mother country'?

One's native land, or the native land of one'south ancestors.

What's the origin of the phrase 'Mother country'?

Mother country The almost mutual use of this expression in English derives from the early European settlers to the U.s.. Two prominent figures of the Pilgrim Father settlers were John Robinson and William Brewster. While in Kingdom of the netherlands, and planning the emigration to America on the Mayflower, they wrote to Sir Edwyn Sandys in 1617:

"We are well weaned from ye delicate milke of our mother countrie, and enured to ye difficulties of a strange and difficult country, which yet in a great parte nosotros have past patience overcome."

In his style of naming his children, Brewster followed, and given the early date we might better say pioneered, the Pilgrim tradition of choosing names in accordance with biblical themes. His beginning child was called Jonathan, but he soon got into his pace with Patience, Fear, Love and finally, Wrestling.

The 'mother land' to Brewster and Robinson was, of form, England and that was mostly what was meant when the phrase came into use in the USA. They didn't coin the phrase themselves but probably read information technology in the works of a prominent Puritan of the day - Arthur Golding. Brewster in detail was well read and owned a library of some 400 books in Latin and English and was certain to have read Golding's works. 'Mother country' appears in more one of Golding's works. For example, The eyght bookes of Caius Iulius Caesar, 1565:

So their mother countrye in Europe not onelye troubled their neighbours, but also vexed and disquietted euen the victorious Romanes

The expression is too found in Golding'southward well-known translation of Ovid's Metamorphosis, 1567:

They went too Phebus Oracle, which willed them too go Untoo theyr moother countrey and the coastes theyr stocke came fro.

Information technology is perhaps an indication of the way of thinking of the Pilgrim Fathers that they chose to prefer the term 'mother state', as opposed to 'fatherland', which was used past others in the 17th century to denote the country of one's heritage.

The phrase was coined earlier America was settled by English speakers and popularised by two Englishmen living at the fourth dimension in Holland. Yet, 'mother country' tin can exist said to exist the first English phrase to have a strong American association - some might say, the start American phrase.

[My thanks to Peter Lukacs, ElizabethanDrama.org for the 1565 citation.]

See other phrases that were coined in the USA.