mother lode

noun

Updated on: 5 Apr 2018

Definition of mother lode

1 : the principal vein or lode of a region

2 : a principal source or supply

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Examples of mother lode in a Sentence

the university has long been a mother lode of athletic talent, with many alumni joining the rarefied ranks of the professionals

Recent Examples of mother lode from the Web

And the collection is still a meiofauna mother lode for contemporary researchers.

— adrienne mason, Smithsonian, "King of The Mud Dragons," 2 Mar. 2018
Comstock boosts asking price for land near Nevada airport Area east of Reno has been booming thanks to Silicon Valley Long-struggling Comstock Mining Inc. may finally have its mother lode.

— Bloomberg.com, "Trump: Will Be Putting in a Lot More Circuit Judges," 23 Feb. 2018
And the only other cities in 2017 to remotely rival Houston’s mother lode of super-high-end athletic prowess would be those who also have NHL teams in the mix.

— dale robertson, San Antonio Express-News, "Houston leads country in star power," 5 Jan. 2018
At Park N Shop on Wilkinson, usually a Jane Parker mother lode, the display was bare.

— kathleen purvis, charlotteobserver, "What’s so great about Jane Parker? | Charlotte Observer," 26 Oct. 2017
Another natural focus of the NASA study is thawing permafrost, which, when melted, would release a mother lode of stored carbon and methane into the atmosphere.

— National Geographic, "Forest Fires Can Heat Up the Whole Planet," 23 June 2016

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'mother lode.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.