Parent

How to spell parent

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce parent

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does parent mean?

1. nounA person's mother or father.
2. verbTo care for and bring up a child.
3. nounA company that owns or controls another company.

Parent in a sentence

• noun

  Every parent at the meeting received a copy of the timetable.

• verb

  They chose to parent their children with patience and clear rules.

• noun

  The smaller firm reports its profits to the parent each quarter.

• noun

  As a single parent, she balanced work and the school run.

• verb

  Learning how to parent well takes years of practice.

• noun

  The parent decided to merge two of its struggling subsidiaries.

Where does parent come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin parentem, the accusative form of parens, meaning 'a father or mother', which was itself built on the verb parere, meaning 'to bring forth' or 'to give birth'. English took it up in the late 1300s through Old French parent, where it could mean a relative more broadly as well as a mother or father. The same parere root lies behind a surprising family of English words, including 'postpartum' (after birth) and the now rare 'parturition' (the act of giving birth). The spelling keeps the simple Latin stem par- and just adds the agent ending -ent, which is the same ending found in 'student' and 'resident'. The chief spelling trap is purely sound: the second vowel is an unstressed schwa, so writers sometimes hesitate over whether it is 'parent' or 'parant', and the answer is the e of -ent.

How the word is built

• par- (from Latin parere: to bring forth, give birth)
• -ent (agent suffix: one who does)