father figure
father figure noun: one who represents, behaves as, or is regarded as equivalent to a father for another person or group of people.
Noun
father figure (plural father figures)
- One who represents, behaves as, or is regarded as equivalent to a father for another person or group of people.
- [Editor David W. Blight said:] Deeply in need of father figures and spiritual hope, and “religiously seeking knowledge,” as he recalled it, the slave boy [the young Frederick Douglass] turned to a religious black man, a freeman named Charles Lawson, who worked as a drayman for a rope maker and...1997 [1797], David W. Blight, “Editor's Introduction: The Peculiar Dialogue Between Caleb Bingham and Frederick Douglass”, in Caleb Bingham, edited by David W. Blight, The Columbian Orator...
- Tudjman, the national father-figure, emerged as the improbable and unexpected victor of the wars of the Yugoslav succession of 1991-99.1999 December 13, Ian Traynor, “Obituary: Franjo Tudjman”, in The Guardian, UK, retrieved 08 Jul 2014
Forms of father figure
| plural | father figures |
|---|---|
| alternative form | father-figure |
Questions about father figure
- What does father figure mean?
- Father figure means one who represents, behaves as, or is regarded as equivalent to a father for another person or group of people.
- What part of speech is father figure?
- Father figure is a noun.
- What is the plural of father figure?
- The plural of father figure is father figures.
Words near father figure in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: father figure (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.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-father figure.ogg.
Cite this entry: “father figure.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/father_figure. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.