alloparent
alloparent noun: an adult animal or person involved in parent-like behaviour towards an individual that is not their offspring.
Noun
alloparent (plural alloparents)
- An adult animal or person involved in parent-like behaviour towards an individual that is not their offspring.
- And Hrdy further suggests that the immersion of human babies in a pool of alloparents would have honed the mind-reading skills and empathy that are so important to our species, faster than anything else.2011, Chris Stringer, The Origin of Our Species, Penguin, published 2012, page 142
- In non-humans, alloparents include relatives who have kin-based incentives to help and nonrelatives who are under coercive threat or have no better option for survival.2016, Joseph Henrich, chapter 16, in The Secret of Our Success […] , Princeton: Princeton University Press, →ISBN
- Synonyms:
- bonus parent
Synonyms of alloparent
Forms of alloparent
| plural | alloparents |
|---|
Origin of alloparent
From allo- + parent.
Questions about alloparent
- What does alloparent mean?
- Alloparent means an adult animal or person involved in parent-like behaviour towards an individual that is not their offspring.
- What part of speech is alloparent?
- Alloparent is a noun.
- What is the plural of alloparent?
- The plural of alloparent is alloparents.
Words near alloparent in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: alloparent (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “alloparent.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/alloparent. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.