page_title: Snowclone
section_title: The mother of all X
hierarchical_section_title: Snowclone / Notable examples / The mother of all X
caption_attribution_description: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein makes a speech about Saudi decision to allow American troops to stay in the country.
context_page_description: A snowclone is a cliché and phrasal template that can be used and recognized in multiple variants. The term was created as a neologism in 2004, derived from journalistic clichés that referred to the number of Eskimo words for snow.
context_section_description: "The mother of all X", a hyperbole that has been used to refer to something as "great" or "the greatest of its kind", became a popular snowclone template in the 1990s. The phrase entered American popular culture in September 1990 at the outset of the Gulf War, when Saddam Hussein's Revolutionary Command Council warned the U.S.-led Coalition against military action in Kuwait with the statement "Let everyone understand that this battle is going to become the mother of all battles." The phrase was repeated in a January 1991 speech by Saddam Hussein. A calque from Arabic, the snowclone gained popularity in the media and was adapted for phrases such as "the mother of all bombs" and New Zealand's "Mother of all Budgets". The American Dialect Society declared "the mother of all" the 1991 Word of the Year. The term "Father of All Bombs" was created by an analogy.
  The Arabic phrase originated from an Arab victory over the Sassanian Persians in 636 AD, described with the earliest known use of the phrase "mother of all battles" (Arabic: ام المعارك umm al-ma‘ārik). Although popularly used simply to mean "greatest" or "ultimate", the Arabic umm al- prefix creates a figurative phrase in which "mother" also suggests that the referent will give rise to many more of its kind. The phrase was used in the naming of a mosque in Baghdad, the Umm al-Ma'arik Mosque.
caption: Saddam Hussein, associated with the popularization of the phrase "the mother of all…" in the West
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