Word.ws English Dictionary

great-

great- prefix: with familial designations, used to denote a removal of one generation.

Prefix

great-

  1. With familial designations, used to denote a removal of one generation
    • great-uncle (an uncle of one's mother or father)
    • great-grandfather (the father of one's grandfather)
    Synonyms:
    grand-

Examples of great- in a sentence

  • great-great-grandfather (a grandfather of one's grandfather)
  • great-great-great-grandfather, etc.
  • (informal) fourth-great-granduncle, etc. (same as great-great-great-great-granduncle)
  • (informal) fourth-great-grandfather, etc. (same as great-great-great-great-grandfather)

Synonyms of great-

Origin of great-

From Middle English gret- (“great-”), from gret (“great”). More at great.

Questions about great-

What does great- mean?
Great- means with familial designations, used to denote a removal of one generation.
How do you use great- in a sentence?
great-great-grandfather (a grandfather of one's grandfather)
What part of speech is great-?
Great- is a prefix.

Words near great- in the dictionary

  1. Great Wolford
  2. Great Yarmouth
  3. Great Year
  4. Great Years
  5. Great Yeldham
  6. great-
  7. great-aunt
  8. great-aunts
  9. great-circle arc
  10. great-circle arcs
  11. great-go

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: great- (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-great-.wav.

Cite this entry: “great-.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/great-. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.