Stepfather
nounThe man who is married to one's mother but is not one's biological father.
How to spell stepfather
10 letters · 3 syllables
How to pronounce stepfather
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does stepfather mean?
- nounThe man who is married to one's mother but is not one's biological father.
Stepfather in a sentence
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Her stepfather taught her to drive when she was seventeen.
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After the wedding, the children gained a kind and patient stepfather.
Where does stepfather come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
The word joins the prefix step- to the noun father. The step- element comes from Old English steop-, which originally carried the bleak sense of being bereaved or orphaned; words like steopcild (a bereaved child) show that the prefix once described loss rather than remarriage. Over time it shifted to mark a family relationship created by a parent's new marriage rather than by blood. Father itself descends from Old English faeder, part of a very old Germanic and Indo-European family of words for a male parent that also produced Latin pater and Greek pater. By the late Old English and early Middle English period the compound was used much as it is today, for the man who marries one's mother. The spelling is regular and predictable: it simply welds step onto father with no hidden letters.
How the word is built
- step- (from Old English steop-, meaning bereaved or related by remarriage)
- father (a male parent)
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