Patriarchal

How to spell patriarchal

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce patriarchal

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does patriarchal mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to a system, society, or family controlled or dominated by men, especially through male inheritance and authority.

Patriarchal in a sentence

• The historian argued that the company still ran on deeply patriarchal lines.

• Property in that era passed down through a strictly patriarchal line of inheritance.

Where does patriarchal come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek patriarkhes, which described the head or founding father of a family or tribe. It was built from pater, meaning 'father', joined to arkhein, the verb 'to rule' or 'to lead', so the literal sense was 'father who rules'. The same arkhein root gives English a whole family of related words, including monarch (sole ruler) and hierarchy (sacred order of rule). Latin took the noun over as patriarcha, used in the early church for the senior bishops of major cities, and the adjective patriarchalis followed. English adopted patriarchal in the 1500s, at first chiefly in religious and family senses, and only later in the modern social sense of a system dominated by men. The spelling keeps the Greek 'arch' intact, which is the part writers most often forget to sound, so picturing the word 'arch' inside it helps fix the trap.

How the word is built

• patri- (father)
• -arch (ruler, chief, from Greek arkhein 'to rule')
• -al (adjective suffix)