Dictionary

unfatherly en · ADJ

Etymology

From un- + fatherly.

Meanings

1. Not fatherly; unpaternal.
   • 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:
   • 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:
   • 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:
   • At first, Mr. Weller received with wry faces a proposition involving the marriage of anybody in whom he took an interest; but, as Mr. Pickwick argued the point with him, and laid great stress on the fact that Mary was not a widow, he gradually became more tractable. Mr. 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, […], published 1837, →OCLC:

Forms

Deriveds

unfatherliness

Translations (1)

ga mí-aithriúil (not fatherly)