Word.ws English Dictionary

paternalise

paternalise is the alternative spelling of paternalize.

Meaning of paternalize

Verb

paternalize (third-person singular simple present paternalizes, present participle paternalizing, simple past and past participle paternalized)

  1. (transitive) To make paternal; to place in a fatherly role.
    • To paternalize the government or make it more bureaucratic is in their judgment to repress private enterprise and to imitate the monarchical systems...1912, Edith M Phelps, Selected Articles on Government Ownership of the Telegraph
  2. control organizations, things etc. disregarding people's freedom and responsibility under guise and pretense of knowing what would be good and proper for them

Forms of paternalise

third-person singular presentpaternalises
present participlepaternalising
past participlepaternalised
pastpaternalised

Origin of paternalise

From paternal + -ise.

Questions about paternalise

What is paternalise the alternative spelling of?
Paternalise is the alternative spelling of paternalize.

Words near paternalise in the dictionary

  1. paternal orphan
  2. paternal orphans
  3. paternal uncle
  4. paternal uncles
  5. paternalisation
  6. paternalise
  7. paternalised
  8. paternalises
  9. paternalising
  10. paternalism
  11. paternalisms

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: paternalise (page history and authors); paternalize (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: “paternalise.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/paternalise. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.