unfather
unfather noun: a man who is not a father.
Noun
unfather (plural unfathers)
- A man who is not a father.
- But this delugic force is not truly akin to those unfathers until Wordsworth recovers from total loss and, in a moment of specular identification, recognizes in that errant power the face of his own soul: "And now recovering, to my Soul I say/'I recognise thy glory'"1994, David Collings, Wordsworthian errancies: the poetics of cultural dismemberment
- With the increasing numbers of unfathers and unmothers, churches need ceremonies that aid acceptance, thank medical professionals for valiant attempts, promote courage to face a childless future and remind them of the omnipresence of the Therapeutic Presence.1997, Humane Health Care International - Volume 13, page 31
Verb
unfather (third-person singular simple present unfathers, present participle unfathering, simple past and past participle unfathered)
- To cause someone to become less of a father.
- A son no son, unfathers me. Earth, sky and deep, rise, come, be father for me: ascend before him into the day, to cover him from all his light, and your annihilation fall on him!1978, Plays and Players - Issue 1; Issue 26, page 46
- More strongly still: "Visitation unfathers men. This phenomenon gradually strangles the father-child relationship."2000, Gilbert Meilaender, Things that Count: Essays Moral and Theological, page 234
- To cause someone to be fatherless.
- Some of these feelings, in all their confusion, press into the flamboyant statement with which he unfathers Cordelia at 1.1.116: The barbarous Scythian Or he that makes his generation messes To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom Be as well neighbour'd, pitied, and relieved, As thou my sometime...1979, “CR. The Centennial Review - Volume 23”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name), number 358
- Yet how is the unfathering related to usurpation? Is the situation as Oedipal as its rhetoric suggests? Oedipus encounters and kills a traveler on the road outside Thebes, and by doing so unfathers himself.1988, J. Douglas Kneale, Monumental writing: aspects of rhetoric in Wordsworth's poetry
Forms of unfather
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | unfathers |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | unfathers |
| present participle | unfathering |
| past participle | unfathered |
| past | unfathered |
Origin of unfather
From un- + father.
Questions about unfather
- What does unfather mean?
- Unfather means a man who is not a father.
- What part of speech is unfather?
- Unfather can be a noun or a verb.
- What is the plural of unfather?
- The plural of unfather is unfathers.
Words near unfather in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: unfather (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.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “unfather.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/unfather. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.