Paternity

How to spell paternity

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce paternity

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does paternity mean?

1. nounThe state of being a father, or the legal question of who a child's father is.

Paternity in a sentence

• The court ordered a test to settle the question of paternity.

• New fathers at the firm are entitled to two weeks of paternity leave.

Where does paternity come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word descends from the Latin paternitas, meaning 'fatherhood', which was built on the adjective paternus, 'fatherly' or 'of a father', and ultimately on pater, the plain Latin word for 'father'. English took it in during the late 1400s by way of Old French paternite, at first in the literal sense of being a father. The pater root is enormously productive and still surfaces in everyday relatives such as 'paternal', 'patron', and even 'pattern', all sharing the idea of a father or a founding figure. Over time paternity gathered its modern legal and administrative shades, covering questions of who a child's father is and, much more recently, the leave a new father takes from work. Remembering that it grows straight from pater helps with the spelling: it keeps a single 't' and ends in the bookish '-ity', not the more tempting '-aty'.

How the word is built

• patern- (from Latin pater: father)
• -ity (noun-forming suffix denoting a state or condition)