paternal quality

1. 1.

   the benignity and protectiveness of or befitting a father

   “the gentleness and fatherliness of the strange old man eased her fears”

   Synonymsfatherliness

   Broaderparental quality

Questions about paternal quality

What does paternal quality mean?

paternal quality means "the benignity and protectiveness of or befitting a father".

What is another word for paternal quality?

Close synonyms include fatherliness. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is paternal quality a common word?

paternal quality 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.