Unfather
noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A man who is not a father.
"But this delugic force is not truly akin to those unfathers until Wordsworth recovers from total loss and, in a moment of specular identification, recognizes in that errant power the face of his own soul: "And now recovering, to my Soul I say/'I recognise thy glory'""
- 1 To cause someone to become less of a father.
"A son no son, unfathers me. Earth, sky and deep, rise, come, be father for me: ascend before him into the day, to cover him from all his light, and your annihilation fall on him!"
- 2 To cause someone to be fatherless.
"Some of these feelings, in all their confusion, press into the flamboyant statement with which he unfathers Cordelia at 1.1.116: The barbarous Scythian Or he that makes his generation messes To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom Be as well neighbour'd, pitied, and relieved, As thou my sometime daughter."
Example
More examples"But this delugic force is not truly akin to those unfathers until Wordsworth recovers from total loss and, in a moment of specular identification, recognizes in that errant power the face of his own soul: "And now recovering, to my Soul I say/'I recognise thy glory'""
Etymology
From un- + father.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.