also Mother Country
( mother countries)
1.
Someone’s mother country is the country in which they or their ancestors were born and to which they still feel emotionally linked, even if they live somewhere else.
Dr Kengerli looks to Turkey as his mother country.
= motherland
N-COUNT : oft with poss
2.
If you refer to the mother country of a particular state or country, you are referring to the very powerful country that used to control its affairs.
Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, had no colonial conflict with the mother country.
N-SING : usu the N