father — OAT · Shobdo

father

noun

1 he went home to see his mother and father:

male parent;

birth father, biological father;

begetter, patriarch, paterfamilias;

informal dad, daddy, pop, poppa, pa, old boy, old man;

adoptive father, foster father, stepfather;

British, informal , dated pater.

2 (usually fathers) literary let me be free to follow the religion of my fathers:

ancestor, forefather, forebear, progenitor, predecessor, antecedent, forerunner, precursor;

rare primogenitor.

▷antonyms descendant.

3 he's held to be the father of abstract art:

originator, initiator, founder, founding father, inventor, creator, maker, author, prime mover, instigator, architect, engineer, designer, deviser, planner, contriver, mastermind;

literary begetter.

4 the city fathers:

leader, elder, senior figure, patriarch, senator, guiding light, official.

5 (Father) our heavenly Father:

God, Lord, Lord God, Deity;

humorous Him upstairs, the man upstairs.

6 (usually Father) the Father joined the other priests:

priest, pastor, parson, clergyman, father confessor, churchman, man of the cloth, man of God, cleric, minister, preacher;

in French-speaking countries abbé, curé;

informal reverend, padre.

verb

1 he fathered six children:

be the father of, sire, engender, generate, bring into being, bring into the world, give life to, spawn;

procreate, reproduce, breed;

literary beget.

2 he fathered a strand of applied economics:

establish, institute, originate, initiate, put in place, invent, found, create, generate, conceive.

word links	father
paternal relating to a father patri- related prefix, as in patriarch, patrilineal patricide killing of one's father