father
Sentences
Meaning
-
- A (generally human) male who begets a child.
- A male ancestor more remote than a parent; a progenitor; especially, a first ancestor.
- A term of respectful address for an elderly man.
- A term of respectful address for a priest.
- A person who plays the role of a father in some way.
- A pioneering figure in a particular field.
- Something that is the greatest or most significant of its kind.
- Something inanimate that begets.
- A member of a church council.
- The archived older version of a file that immediately precedes the current version, and was itself derived from the grandfather.
Synonyms
male parent
father’s brother
my father
mother’s sister’s husband
father’s sister
male ancestor
cleargyman
the episcopacy
the episcopate
paternal relation
my uncle
family head
spiritual father
your father
one’s own father
Frequency
Hyphenated as
fa‧ther
Pronounced as (IPA)
/ˈfɑːðə(ɹ)/
Etymology
In summary
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *peh₂-? Proto-Indo-European *-tḗr? Proto-Indo-European *ph₂tḗr Proto-Germanic *fadēr Proto-West Germanic *fader Old English fæder Middle English fader English father From Middle English fader, from Old English fæder, from Proto-West Germanic *fader, from Proto-Germanic *fadēr, from Proto-Indo-European *ph₂tḗr. Doublet of ayr, faeder, padre, pater, and père. The development of the /ɑː/ vowel (outside of those accents which also have it in rather, lather) is irregular and has not been conclusively explained.
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Notes
