How to use paternal in a sentence
34 example sentences · adjective, noun
Paternal means of or pertaining to one's father, his genes, his relatives, or his side of a family. Example: “Men who become fathers later in life may pass a mark of longevity down to their paternal grandchildren.”
Examples of paternal by meaning
adjectiveOf or pertaining to one's father, his genes, his relatives, or his side of a family.
- The eldest son was usually given the name of his paternal grandfather, later children those of other relatives.1945, E[lizabeth] G[idley] Withycombe, “Introduction”, in The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Clarendon...
nounA person related through the father, or his side of the family; a paternal relative.
- It's out of respect for that position as well as respect for your paternals that you should do this.1997 October 15, Susan Rankin, “Need Advice!”, in alt.wedding (Usenet), archived from the original on 09 Dec 2025
- Of course it is quite possible to use one set for the paternals and the other for the maternals.1998 March 29, Manuel M Campagna, “Eurolang (was: ESPERANTO)”, in soc.culture.esperanto (Usenet), archived from the original on 09 Dec 2025
- "To the maternals, to the paternals." or "From the maternals, from the paternals.".1998 April 23, John W Kennedy, “The Corps is Mother, the Corps is Father ( *Spoilers* )”, in rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated (Usenet)...
More sentences with paternal
- Men who become fathers later in life may pass a mark of longevity down to their paternal grandchildren.From the entry paternal grandchild
- His paternal grandfather, also named John, was a professional song-and-dance man.2020, The Editors of PEOPLE, “John”, in PEOPLE Celebrating Beatlemania, page 27. From the entry song-and-dance man
- It was found that, on average, maternal grandfathers were more involved with adolescent grandchildren than paternal grandfathers.2016, Jo-Pei Tan, Ann Buchanan, “Links between Grandfather Involvement and Adolescent Well-being in England and Wales”, in Ann Buchanan…. From the entry grandfather
- Adolescents also felt closer to maternal grandfathers compared to paternal grandfathers.2016, Jo-Pei Tan, Ann Buchanan, “Links between Grandfather Involvement and Adolescent Well-being in England and Wales”, in Ann Buchanan…. From the entry grandfather
- Again the precepts of some extrafamilial or surrogately paternal relationship are violated.2014, Mary N. Layoun, Travels of a Genre: The Modern Novel and Ideology. From the entry surrogately
- Obviously at my age my interest was purely paternal but my younger self was head over heels.2013, Dennis Coughlin, Passport to Life, →ISBN, page 155. From the entry head over heels
- As a result, analogies between royal, paternal, and husbandly authority were frequently drawn.2012, Faramerz Dabhoiwala, The Origins of Sex, Penguin, published 2013, page 211. From the entry husbandly
- The gift equation deserves special attention among the land transfer equations for both paternal and maternal sibsets.2001, International Food Policy Research Institute, Research report (issues 120-124). From the entry sibset
- The behaviors associated with alloparenting are phenotypically similar to maternal and paternal care.1997, C. Sue Carter, R. Lucille Roberts, “9: The Psychobiological Basis of Cooperative Breeding in Rodents”, in Nancy G. Solomon, Jeffrey…. From the entry alloparenting
- The paternal signifiers of labor, alienation, and the monogendered class dynamic of historical materialism remain taken-for-granted universals.1992, Carmen Luke, “Feminist Politics in Radical Pedagogy”, in Feminisms and Critical Pedagogy, Routledge, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 30. From the entry monogendered
- In the Honam region, the succession is through paternal lines based on tan'golp'an (hereditary priestly authority).1988, Kim T'ae-gon, “Regional Characteristics of Korean Shamanism”, in Yi Yu-jin, transl., edited by Richard W.I. Guisso and Chai-shun Yu…. From the entry Honam
- I would dislike to see the Supreme Chapter become paternal in its nature twoard the subordinate chapters.1920, Desmos of Delta Sigma Delta, page 226. From the entry big brotherism
- I am hard put to it, very often, to be simply paternal.”1905, Bettina [Riddle] von Hutten, chapter V, in Pam, New York, N.Y.: A[lbert] L[evi] Burt Company, page 121. From the entry ungrandfatherly
- He breaks the bad news with a sweet paternal touch and enrols the orphan in his Hogwartsian school for precocious mutants.2019 June 7, Matthew Norman, “Let’s hope this phoenix never rises from the ashes”, in Evening Standard, page 28. From the entry Hogwartsian
- My paternal grandfather U May Oung, a Rakhaing, feared the erosion of the Buddhist way of life under colonial rule.2019, Kin Thida Oung, The Road from Mandalay. From the entry Rakhaing
- Isa is my paternal grandmother's name (shortened from Isabel) and May my maternal grandmother's (it comes, somehow, from Margaret).2010, Margaret Forster, Isa & May, Chatto & Windus, →ISBN, page 5. From the entry may
- Found on W'pedia: Hammurabi (Akkadian from Amorite Ammurapi, "the kinsman is a healer," from Ammu, "paternal kinsman," and Rapi, "healer".2009 August 21, Sean_Q_, “The Healer-King & other notions”, in alt.books.inklings (Usenet), archived from the original on 25 Oct 2025. From the entry W'pedia
- Tariq had told her that his parents were taking him south, to the city of Ghazni, to visit his paternal uncle.2007, Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns, Bloomsbury Publishing, page 107. From the entry Ghazni
- Wordsworth, who occupies the hard-to-hold ground between the neoclassicism of Johnson and the ultraromanticism of Shelley, beckons with paternal authority.2007, Lee Oser, The Return of Christian Humanism, page 133. From the entry ultraromanticism
- It was a pocket-protector paradise, its culture defined by the HP way: paternal, collaborative, entrepreneurial, community minded and inconspicuous.2005, Time. From the entry pocket protector
- In sum, the subject’s paternal family was of very haute black bourgeoisie origins, upper civil service, in Antigua.2003, Norman Rush, “So, My Boy, Now You Have Him”, in Mortals, Vintage International, published July 2004, →ISBN, page 228. From the entry haute
- The paternal given names easily supplant the maternal ones.1985, Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, “The Name ‘Remade’”, in Lydia Cochrane, transl., Women, Family and Ritual in Renaissance Italy, paperback…. From the entry maternal
- His paternal grandfather Chao Changbun had been the king of Mungrimungram (of Khunlung line) while his maternal grandfather was Chao Tai Pung.2019 December 2, B. K. Gohain, “Chaolung Siu-Ka-Pha, the Great Nation Builder”, in The Sentinel, archived from the original on 24 Jun…. From the entry Mungrimungram
- Maybe a few dozen hours of collective neofans, all reading him fanzine press at once, would cure him of these paternal instincts.1988, Sharyn McCrumb, Bimbos of the Death Sun, →ISBN, page 9. From the entry fanzine
- The father is more apt to have recourse to relatively distant paternal kin or to his own maternal kin than to his own affines.1985, Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, “The Name ‘Remade’”, in Lydia Cochrane, transl., Women, Family and Ritual in Renaissance Italy, paperback…. From the entry maternal
- His pardon of his son Hunter was understandable from a paternal perspective (what father wants to see his son in prison?), but it was inexcusably unprincipled.2025 January 23, David French, “Donald Trump Is Running Riot”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN…. From the entry unprincipled
- So the man whom we know as Julius Caesar was a member of the Julii clan belonging to a particular branch whose paternal designation was Caesar.2007, Mark Walker, “Roman Names, Numerals, Dates & Days”, in Annus Horribilis: Latin for Everyday Life, Stroud, Gloucestershire: The…. From the entry Julius
- Like a latter-day Faustus who has mortgaged his soul to the pursuit of his art, Harrison now desperately craves the paternal love from which his learning has estranged him.2001, Antony Rowland, Tony Harrison and the Holocaust, page 193. From the entry mortgage
- With two sets of long-distance grandparents, paternal in California and my husband and me in Wisconsin, our young Quebeckian grandchildren sometimes have difficulty keeping us separated in their thinking.1982, Jocelyn Reichel, “Poquito, Our Logo”, in Retirement Is for the Birds, Chicago, Ill.: Moody Press, →ISBN, page 46. From the entry Quebeckian
- When we had done all the things there were to do, he passed out and I clung to his reassuringly solid, soft stomach—paternal, so different to the indie waifs—and cried.2021, Megan Nolan, Acts of Desperation, Random House, →ISBN. From the entry waif
Meaning of paternal
- adjective Of or pertaining to one's father, his genes, his relatives, or his side of a family.
- adjective Fatherly; behaving as or characteristic of a father.
- adjective Received or inherited from one's father.
Questions about paternal in a sentence
- How do you use paternal in a sentence?
- Paternal is used as an adjective and noun. For example: “Men who become fathers later in life may pass a mark of longevity down to their paternal grandchildren.”
- What is a short sentence with paternal?
- “The paternal given names easily supplant the maternal ones.”
- What does paternal mean?
- Paternal means of or pertaining to one's father, his genes, his relatives, or his side of a family.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: paternal (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this page: “How to use paternal in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/paternal. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
