Word.ws English Dictionary

paternalize

paternalize verb: to make paternal; to place in a fatherly role.

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 paternalize

third-person singular presentpaternalizes
present participlepaternalizing
past participlepaternalized
pastpaternalized

Origin of paternalize

From paternal + -ize.

Words formed from paternalize

Questions about paternalize

What does paternalize mean?
Paternalize means to make paternal; to place in a fatherly role.
What part of speech is paternalize?
Paternalize is a verb.
What is the past tense of paternalize?
The past tense of paternalize is paternalized.

Words near paternalize in the dictionary

  1. paternalistic
  2. paternalistically
  3. paternalists
  4. paternality
  5. paternalization
  6. paternalize
  7. paternalized
  8. paternalizer
  9. paternalizers
  10. paternalizes
  11. paternalizing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: 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: “paternalize.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/paternalize. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.