Definition of "mother country" []

• The country of one's birth or one's ancestors. (noun)
• The country from which the settlers of a territory originally came. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Frantz Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth wrote about how colonized people had colonized minds — they accepted the place the mother country had put them in, but they were not aware that they were accepting this role."
• "The Australian politician Andrew Fisher, soon to become prime minister, had declared that Australia would support “the mother country to the last man and the last shilling,” and volunteers had swarmed into recruiting depots."
• "Only in this way could the Anschluss with the old mother country be restored."