Grandfather

How to spell grandfather

11 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce grandfather

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does grandfather mean?

1. nounThe father of one's mother or father.
2. verbTo exempt an existing person or arrangement from a new rule or regulation.

Grandfather in a sentence

• noun

  Her grandfather taught her how to repair a bicycle.

• verb

  The new policy will grandfather current employees on the older pension plan.

• noun

  The old farmhouse had belonged to his grandfather before the war.

• verb

  Regulators agreed to grandfather the licences issued before the deadline.

Where does grandfather come from?

Language of origin: French

This is a compound of two older words. The second part, 'father', is thoroughly native: it descends from Old English 'f 𝛂der' and ultimately from the same ancient Indo-European root that gave Latin 'pater' and Greek 'pater', all meaning a male parent. The first part, 'grand', came into English from Anglo-French and Old French 'grand', meaning 'great' or 'large', which traces back to Latin 'grandis', 'full-grown, great'. English speakers borrowed the French habit of using 'grand' to mean 'one degree further removed in the family line', so a grandfather is literally a 'great father', the father of one's parent. The pairing replaced the older native term 'eldfather' during the late medieval period, and by the 1400s 'grandfather' was settled in its modern form. The verb sense, as in to grandfather an existing arrangement under a new rule, is a much later American development from the nineteenth-century 'grandfather clause'.

How the word is built

• grand- (great, one generation removed)
• father (male parent)