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say it: FAH-thur
father is a noun and verb meaning "a male parent (also used as a term of address to your father)". It carries 9 recorded senses.
a male parent (also used as a term of address to your father)
“his father was born in Atlanta”
the founder of a family
“keep the faith of our forefathers”
(Christianity) any of about 70 theologians in the period from the 2nd to the 7th century whose writing established and confirmed official church doctrine; in the Roman Catholic Church some were later declared saints and became Doctor of the Church; the best known Latin Church Fathers are Ambrose, Augustine, Gregory the Great, and Jerome; those who wrote in Greek include Athanasius, Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, and John Chrysostom
Christianity
a person who holds an important or distinguished position in some organization
“the tennis fathers ruled in her favor”
“the city fathers endorsed the proposal”
God when considered as the first person in the Trinity
“hear our prayers, Heavenly Father”
a person who founds or establishes some institution
“George Washington is the father of his country”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for father come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.