Word.ws English Dictionary

grandfather rights

grandfather rights noun: rights granted because of a pre-existing right or privilege, e.g. before a change in the law.

Noun

grandfather rights pl (normally plural, singular grandfather right)

  1. (plural, plural-normally) Rights granted because of a pre-existing right or privilege, e.g. before a change in the law.
    • He was able to drive a 7.5-tonner using his grandfather rights, as he obtained his driving licence before the law was changed.
    • What is described as 'grandfather rights' has allowed older equipment to continue in operation where a financial case cannot be made to adopt new regulations. But such dispensations are inevitably time limited and ultimately a decision to replace or modify them must be made.2021 January 27, Industry Insider, “Surplus to requirements”, in RAIL, number 923, page 68

Forms of grandfather rights

singulargrandfather right

Questions about grandfather rights

What does grandfather rights mean?
Grandfather rights means rights granted because of a pre-existing right or privilege, e.g. before a change in the law.
What part of speech is grandfather rights?
Grandfather rights is a noun.

Words near grandfather rights in the dictionary

  1. grandfather clock
  2. grandfather clocks
  3. grandfather in
  4. grandfather paradox
  5. grandfather paradoxes
  6. grandfather rights
  7. grandfather shirt
  8. grandfather shirts
  9. grandfather's beard
  10. grandfather's chair
  11. grandfather's clock

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: grandfather rights (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: “grandfather rights.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/grandfather_rights. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.