Paternity

//pəˈtɜːnɪti// noun

noun ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Fatherhood, the state or quality of being a father. countable, uncountable
  2. 2
    the act of initiating a new idea or theory or writing wordnet
  3. 3
    Parental descent from a father. countable, uncountable
  4. 4
    the kinship relation between an offspring and the father wordnet
  5. 5
    Legal acknowledgement of a man's fatherhood of a child. countable, uncountable
Show 2 more definitions
  1. 6
    the state of being a father wordnet
  2. 7
    Authorship. countable, figuratively, uncountable

    "The author asserted her right to paternity on the book's copyright page."

Synonyms

All synonyms
fatherhoodaffiliationagnationallianceancestryauthorship

Example

More examples

"We should guarantee paid maternity leave and paid paternity leave, too. That’s how you value families."

Etymology

From Middle French paternité, from Old French, from Latin paternitās (“paternity”), from paternus (“of or pertaining to a father, paternal”) + -itās, from pater (“father”).

Related phrases

paternity leavepaternity suitpaternity testpaternity leavepaternity suitpaternity test

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.