Word.ws English Dictionary

not your father's

not your father's phrase: recently changed, made unconventional through modernisation.

Phrase

not your father's

  1. (idiomatic) Recently changed, made unconventional through modernisation.
    • This is not your father's computer programmer. The days when the typical information technology professional sat in a cubicle all day hunched over a keyboard, a can of Jolt Cola and a half-eaten Twinkie within arm's reach, seem about as quaint now as a genuine whistle-stop political campaign in the...2001, Leslie Jaye Goff, Get Your IT Career in Gear!, →ISBN, page 3
    • Make no mistake about it, this ain't your dad's Final Fantasy. If you want an effiminate spikey haired main character with amnesia or serious social issues that must shoulder the burden of fighting a great and ancient evil, you're not going to find that here.2005, Shoeless Wayne Santos, “Final Fantasy XII”, in GameAxis Unwired, page 54

Examples of not your father's in a sentence

  • This is not your father's computer programmer.2001, Leslie Jaye Goff, Get Your IT Career in Gear!, →ISBN, page 3:
  • Just as this isn't your father's army — it's also not your father's VA.2011, Peter S. Gaytan, For Service to Your Country: The Essential Guide to Getting the Veterans' Benefits You've Earned, →ISBN, page xv:

Forms of not your father's

alternative formnot your dad's

Origin of not your father's

From an advertising slogan for the Oldsmobile car, "this is not your father's Oldsmobile".

Questions about not your father's

What does not your father's mean?
Not your father's means recently changed, made unconventional through modernisation.
How do you use not your father's in a sentence?
This is not your father's computer programmer.
What part of speech is not your father's?
Not your father's is a phrase.

Words near not your father's in the dictionary

  1. not worth the powder and shot
  2. not worth writing home about
  3. not wrapped too tight
  4. not yet
  5. not yets
  6. not your father's
  7. not've
  8. not-at-homeness
  9. Not-Deer
  10. not-dog
  11. not-dogs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: not your father's (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: En-au-not your father's.ogg.

Cite this entry: “not your father's.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/not_your_father%27s. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.