• fatherly •
Printable Version Pronunciation: fah-dhê(r)-li • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Adjective
Meaning: Having the affection of a father; befitting a father or fatherhood, which is to say, kind and protective.
Notes: Today's topical Good Word is the adjective from father, found in the name of today's holiday, Father's Day. The suffix -ly converts adjectives into adverbs: quickly, happily, brightly. When added to nouns, it creates adjectives like friendly, sisterly, and today's word. If the noun refers to time, adding -ly allows it to be used as an adverb or adjective: weekly (weekly reports are written weekly), hourly, yearly. The noun is fatherliness and the adverb is the same as the adjective: fatherly.
In Play: Like motherly and motherhood, today's Good Word emphasizes all that is good in fatherhood: "I think Paris Hilton could have used a bit more fatherly guidance." (Hmmm. Maybe motherly, too.) "Fatherly heroes are hard to find in the literature and filmography of the 21st century." We hope that all the fathers reading today's Good Word are enjoying well-deserved recognition for their efforts over the year. alphaDictionary salutes you all.
Word History: We have already explored the origin of father, so let's take a look at the suffix -ly today. This suffix is a reduction of Old English lic, today's like. So the suffix -ly comes from an ancestor of like. We can see the process beginning again today in the compounds dream-like, tree-like, snake-like, and the likes. Old English lic is a reduction of gelic, a form which reduced differently in German to produce gleich "like". In Russian and other Slavic languages the same basic root emerged as lico "face", the measure of human likeness.
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