Papa

How to spell papa

4 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce papa

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does papa mean?

1. nounAn informal or affectionate word for one's father.
2. nounThe code word for the letter P in the NATO phonetic alphabet.

Papa in a sentence

• Every Sunday the children visited their papa for lunch.

• The pilot read the registration aloud, using papa for the letter P.

• Her papa taught her to ride a bicycle in the back garden.

• In the radio drill the instructor called out papa to confirm the spelling.

Where does papa come from?

Language of origin: French

Papa is one of a small family of words built from the simple syllable 'pa', a sound that babies the world over produce early and easily, which adults across many languages have taken up as a name for the father. English borrowed this particular form from French papa in the 1600s, where it was a familiar, affectionate term, and French in turn echoed the Latin and Greek papas. The doubling of the syllable is typical of nursery words, like 'mama' and 'dada', and explains why the spelling is simply the same two letters repeated. Because the word is so phonetically natural, almost identical forms appear independently in tongues as far apart as Russian and Hindi, which is why scholars treat it as a near-universal rather than a strict borrowing. The straightforward spelling rarely troubles writers, since it is exactly as it sounds.

How the word is built

• papa (reduplicated infant syllable pa- doubled)