Patriarchy

How to spell patriarchy

10 letters · 4 syllables

5 of the 26 people asked to spell patriarchy in Spelling Garden got it wrong the first time.

How to pronounce patriarchy

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does patriarchy mean?

1. nounA social system in which men hold most of the power and women are largely excluded from it.

Patriarchy in a sentence

• The historian argued that the legal system reinforced a long-standing patriarchy.

• Many of the family businesses were run as a strict patriarchy, with authority passing from father to son.

Where does patriarchy come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word comes from the Greek patriarkhia, built from patriarkhes, a 'ruling father' or head of a family line. That term joins patria, meaning 'lineage' or 'family' (itself rooted in pater, 'father'), with arkhein, the verb 'to rule' or 'to govern'. In its earliest use the word described the senior ecclesiastical figures of the early Christian church, the patriarchs who governed major regions, and it entered English in the 1500s through Latinised church usage. The same arkhein root gives English a whole family of governing words, including monarchy ('rule by one'), oligarchy ('rule by a few') and anarchy ('without a ruler'), so the -archy ending always signals a form of rule. The modern sense of a social system in which men hold the power grew much later, becoming common in the twentieth century. For spelling, it helps to remember the hidden building blocks: patri (father) plus arch (the same chunk you see in 'archbishop'), then a final -y.

How the word is built

• patri- (from Greek patria/pater: father)
• arch (from arkhein: to rule)
• -y (noun-forming suffix)