Granddaughter
nounThe female child of one's son or daughter.
How to spell granddaughter
13 letters · 3 syllables
How to pronounce granddaughter
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does granddaughter mean?
- nounThe female child of one's son or daughter.
Granddaughter in a sentence
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My granddaughter visits every Sunday for lunch.
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She opened a savings account for her newborn granddaughter.
Where does granddaughter come from?
Language of origin: French
This is a transparent compound of 'grand' and 'daughter', but each half has its own history. The 'grand' element came into English through Old French grand, from the Latin grandis meaning 'great' or 'full-grown', and it was attached to kinship words to mark a generation's distance, exactly as in 'grandmother' and 'grandfather'. 'Daughter' is by contrast a thoroughly native word, descending from Old English dohtor and ultimately from a very old Germanic and Indo-European root shared with German Tochter and Greek thugater. The combined form 'granddaughter' appears in English from the 1600s, modelled on the older 'grandchild' and 'grandson'. The crucial spelling trap lives at the seam: 'grand' ends in d and 'daughter' begins with d, so the written word genuinely carries a doubled d (grand + daughter), which is why 'grandaughter' is such a common slip.
How the word is built
- grand- (one generation removed, from French grand 'great')
- daughter (female child)
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