Word.ws English Dictionary

parentlock

parentlock noun: a subgenre of Sherlock fan fiction in which Sherlock and John raise a child or children together.

Noun

parentlock (uncountable)

  1. (Sherlock fandom slang) A subgenre of Sherlock fan fiction in which Sherlock and John raise a child or children together.
    • Especially because of Season Three's depiction of heavily pregnant Mary in "His Last Vow," fans who ship Johnlock are more likely to consider the inclusion of a Watson baby within the parentlock narrative of Sherlock and John.2016, Alyxis Smith, “Fan Fiction as an Argument: Arguing for Johnlock through the Roles of Women and Explicit Sex Scenes in Sherlock Fan Fiction”, in Lynnette Porter, editor, Who Is Sherlock?: Essays...
    • The relevant tags here were very similar to LJ, if phrased slightly differently: e.g., parentlock (portmanteau of parent + Sherlock), military John, genderswap, mpreg.2017, Judith May Fathallah, Fanfiction and the Author: How Fanfic Changes Popular Cultural Texts, page 65

Origin of parentlock

Blend of parent + Sherlock.

Questions about parentlock

What does parentlock mean?
Parentlock means a subgenre of Sherlock fan fiction in which Sherlock and John raise a child or children together.
What part of speech is parentlock?
Parentlock is a noun.

Words near parentlock in the dictionary

  1. parentland
  2. parentlands
  3. parentless
  4. parentlessness
  5. parentlike
  6. parentlock
  7. parently
  8. parentness
  9. parents
  10. parents' evening
  11. parents' rights

Source and license

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