in loco parentis

1. 1.

   in place of the parents

   “we had to punish this child in loco parentis”

Questions about in loco parentis

What does in loco parentis mean?

in loco parentis means "in place of the parents".

Is in loco parentis a common word?

in loco parentis is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.