papa bear

Noun

papa bear (plural papa bears)

1. (informal) A male bear who has sired cubs.
2. (broadly, slang) A man, especially a father, who is extremely protective of a child or children.
   • Her husband, James, worked in the mills of U.S. Sugar. Once the cane season was finished, he followed harvests as a packinghouse foreman. He was a papa bear in the wide eyes of his children, strong arms and a round belly, a man whose talents over a kitchen stove braising oxtails and simmering stews...2012, Bryan Mealer, chapter 5, in Muck City, Crown Archetype, page 82
   • He shook his head. “I don’t know anything, Ivy, because I don’t tune in to gossip. Plus...I really had no right to ask that question. You’re here to work, and your skills and dependability are all that matter. I shouldn’t have gone all Papa Bear on you and asked. I retract my question.”2015, Myrna Mackenzie, chapter 3, in Cowgirl Makes Three, in New Arrivals: His Inherited Family, Mills & Boon, page 37
3. (colloquial) One's father.
   • “And you thought I brought home nothing for my papa bear.”2015, Daniel Kraus, chapter 16, in The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch: At the edge of empire, Volume I, Simon & Schuster, page 283
   • And to my Papa Bear, who does the most accurate impression of Gollum I’ve ever seen, who brings me chocolate when I’m down, and who raised and loved me as his own.2015, R.K. Summers, “Acknowledgements”, in The Old Ways, Inspired Quill, page 6

   Synonyms:

   dad, pa, ayr, ba, baba, da, dada, daddio, daddy, father