Patriarchal

//ˌpeɪtɹiˈɑɹkl̩// adj

adj ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Characteristic of a patriarch; venerable.

    "About whose patriarchal knee / Late the little children clung."

  2. 2
    Relating to a system run by males, rather than females; relating to a patriarchy.
Adjective
  1. 1
    characteristic of a form of social organization in which the male is the family head and title is traced through the male line wordnet
  2. 2
    relating to or characteristic of a man who is older or higher in rank wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
patriarchicaboriginalabsoluteadvancedadvanced in lifeadvanced in years

Example

More examples

"Tom believes in a patriarchal society."

Etymology

Borrowed from Late Latin patriarchālis, from patriarcha + -ālis. Sychronically analyzable as patriarch + -al.

Related phrases

patriarchal churchpatriarchal cross

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