Dictionaries › English

parent

Pronunciation: /ˈpɛəɹənt/

The English word “parent” has 13 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. A person who raises a child (which they have made, adopted, fostered, taken as their own, etc.).
  2. A person who has had a baby; this person in relation to their child or children.
  3. A surrogate parent.
  4. A third person who has provided DNA samples in an IVF procedure in order to alter faulty genetic material.
  5. A relative.
  6. The source or origin of something.
  7. An organism from which a plant or animal is immediately biologically descended.
  8. Sponsor, supporter, owner, protector.
  9. A parent company.
  10. The object from which a child or derived object is descended; a node superior to another node.
  11. The nuclide that decays into a daughter nuclide.

verb

  1. To act as parent, to raise or rear.
  2. To provide a parent object for one or more other objects, which become the children.

Etymology

From Middle English parent, borrowed from Anglo-Norman parent, Middle French parent, from Latin parentem, accusative of parēns (“parent”), present participle of pariō (“to breed, bring forth”).

Keep exploring: in the interactive dictionary every word of a definition is a link. Open “parent” there

More English words

About this dictionary

The English dictionary on Glottosphere has 650,529 entries with a page. Browse the English dictionary.

Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.