Eldfather
noun
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 One's grandfather or forefather. archaic, dialectal
"Elof sat with his eyes closed, still in the grip of the thought that he had just heard his eldfathers, all the way back to Adam, chanting at the table."
- 2 One's father-in-law. obsolete
Example
More examples"Elof sat with his eyes closed, still in the grip of the thought that he had just heard his eldfathers, all the way back to Adam, chanting at the table."
Etymology
From Middle English eldfader, variant of olde fader, from Old English eald fæder (“grandfather, ancestor”), equivalent to eld (“old”) + father. Cognate with Scots eldfader (“grandfather, father-in-law”), Old Frisian aldafeder (“grandfather”).
Related phrases
More for "eldfather"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.