unfatherly
unfatherly adjective: not fatherly; unpaternal.
Adjective
unfatherly (comparative more unfatherly, superlative most unfatherly)
- Not fatherly; unpaternal.
- Shall we come thus far, and in such post haste,
And have our children here, and both within,
And not behold them e’er our back-return?
It were unfriendly, and unfatherly.1602, anonymous author, A Pleasant Conceited Comedy, Wherein is shewed how a man may chuse a good wife from a bad, London: Mathew Lawe, act I, scene 2 - Mr. Palmer maintained the common, but unfatherly opinion among his sex, of all infants being alike; and though she could plainly perceive, at different times, the most striking resemblance between this baby and every one of his relations on both sides, there was no convincing his father of it […]1811, [Jane Austen], chapter 36, in Sense and Sensibility […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: […] C[harles] Roworth, […], and published by T[homas] Egerton, […], →OCLC
- Shall we come thus far, and in such post haste,
Examples of unfatherly in a sentence
- Pickwick had great influence over him, and he had been much struck with Mary’s appearance; having, in fact, bestowed several very unfatherly winks upon her, already.1836 March – 1837 October, Charles Dickens, chapter 56, in The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, London: Chapman and Hall, […]...
- Alladad Khan, left alone, dandled unhandily his child in unfatherly arms.1956, Anthony Burgess, Time for a Tiger (The Malayan Trilogy), published 1972, page 121:
Forms of unfatherly
| comparative | more unfatherly |
|---|---|
| superlative | most unfatherly |
Origin of unfatherly
From un- + fatherly.
Words formed from unfatherly
Questions about unfatherly
- What does unfatherly mean?
- Unfatherly means not fatherly; unpaternal.
- How do you use unfatherly in a sentence?
- Pickwick had great influence over him, and he had been much struck with Mary’s appearance; having, in fact, bestowed several very unfatherly winks upon her, already.
- What part of speech is unfatherly?
- Unfatherly is an adjective.
Words near unfatherly in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: unfatherly (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: “unfatherly.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/unfatherly. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.