Mother Hubbard can have different, probably related, meanings:
- Old Mother Hubbard is a nursery rhyme.
- Mother Hubbard (dress) is a dress from the South Seas.
- A Mother Hubbard was another name for a camelback steam locomotive.
A Mother Hubbard Clause is a provision in a deed for the conveyance of real property that attempts to sweep within it other parcels not specifically described.
For example: O gives B a mortgage on a tract of land and "all other land I own in Delaware." O owns several other tracts of land in Delaware. Generally, Mother Hubbard clauses are not valid against subsequent purchasers of the undescribed land, and a bona fide purchaser of the other land in Delaware would not take subject to the mortgage.
Famous quotes containing the words mother and/or hubbard:
“When I hear the hypercritical quarreling about grammar and style, the position of the particles, etc., etc., stretching or contracting every speaker to certain rules of theirs ... I see that they forget that the first requisite and rule is that expression shall be vital and natural, as much as the voice of a brute or an interjection: first of all, mother tongue; and last of all, artificial or father tongue. Essentially your truest poetic sentence is as free and lawless as a lamb’s bleat.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“All th’ world loves a good loser.”
—Kin Hubbard (F. [Frank] Mckinney Hubbard)