parent

From Middle English parent, borrowed from Anglo-Norman parent, Middle French parent, from Latin parentem, accusative of parēns (“parent”), present participle of pariō (“I breed, bring forth”).

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈpɛə.ɹənt/; enPR: pâʹ-rənt

  • Audio (UK):

    (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈpɛɹ.ənt/, /ˈpæɹ.ənt/; enPR: pârʹ-ənt, părʹ-ənt

  • Audio (US):

    (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛə(ɹ)ənt, -æɹənt

parent (plural parents)

1. (often in the plural) A person who raises a child (which they have made, adopted, fostered, taken as their own, etc.). [from 15th c.]

   After both her parents were killed in a forest fire, Sonia was adopted by her aunt and uncle.

   • 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii]:

     my trust / Like a good parent, did beget of him / A falsehood in it's contrarie, as great / As my trust was, which had indeede no limit, / A confidence sans bound.

   • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, John 9:19–20:

     And they asked them, saying, Is this your son, who ye say was born blind? how then doth he now see? His parents answered them and said, We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind […]

   • 2005 August 24, Siobhan O'Neill, The Guardian:

     The NHS is naturally pro-immunisation, reassuring parents that their babies can easily cope with these jabs.

   • 2013 June 7, Joseph Stiglitz, “Globalisation is about taxes too”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 188, number 26, page 19:

     It is time the international community faced the reality: we have an unmanageable, unfair, distortionary global tax regime. […] It is the starving of the public sector which has been pivotal in America no longer being the land of opportunity – with a child's life prospects more dependent on the income and education of its parents than in other advanced countries.

   Synonyms: genitor, progenitor

   Antonyms: child, offspring

   Hyponyms: father, mother

2. (often in the plural) A person who has had a baby; this person in relation to their child or children.
3. A surrogate parent.
4. A third person who has provided DNA samples in an IVF procedure in order to alter faulty genetic material.
5. (obsolete) A relative. [15th–18th c.]
6. The source or origin of something. [from 16th c.]
   • 1785, Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia:

     Misery is often the parent of the most affecting touches in poetry.

   • 1789, The Critical Review, Or, Annals of Literature, volume 68, page 341:

     Indolence and unalimentary food are the parents of this disease; but to neither are Indians accustomed.

7. (biology) An organism from which a plant or animal is immediately biologically descended. [from 17th c.]
8. (attributive) Sponsor, supporter, owner, protector. ^[1]
   • 1944, Miles Burton, The Three Corpse Trick, chapter 5:

     The dinghy was trailing astern at the end of its painter, and Merrion looked at it as he passed. He saw that it was a battered-looking affair of the prahm type, with a blunt snout, and like the parent ship, had recently been painted a vivid green.

   1. A parent company. [from 20th c.]
      • 2013 June 22, “T time”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8841, page 68:

        The ability to shift profits to low-tax countries by locating intellectual property in them […] is often assumed to be the preserve of high-tech companies. […] current tax rules make it easy for all sorts of firms to generate […] “stateless income”: profit subject to tax in a jurisdiction that is neither the location of the factors of production that generate the income nor where the parent firm is domiciled.

9. (computing) The object from which a child or derived object is descended; a node superior to another node. [from 20th c.]

   Synonym: mother

   Antonym: child

10. (physics) The nuclide that decays into a daughter nuclide.

parent (third-person singular simple present parents, present participle parenting, simple past and past participle parented)

1. To act as parent, to raise or rear.

   Synonyms: raise, rear

   • 2006, Natalie Bandlow, Parent to Child the Guide: How to Create a Comprehensive And Meaningful Journal to Prepare Your Child for Life, iUniverse, →ISBN, page 1:

     However, even with money and caregivers, the child is left without a parent and most likely without a plan for their emotional, psychological, and spiritual well-being. A time will come when you will no longer be able to parent your child, period.

2. (programming) To provide a parent object for one or more other objects, which become the children.

• parenting
• parentize
• parentify

• foster

• -pteran, Panter, Parten, arpent, enrapt, entrap, panter, trepan

Inherited from Latin parentem.

• IPA^(key): (Central) [pəˈɾen]
• IPA^(key): (Balearic) [pəˈɾent]
• IPA^(key): (Valencia) [paˈɾent]

parent m (plural parents, feminine parenta, feminine plural parentes)

1. relative (someone in the same family)

• emparentar

• parentiu

• “parent”, in Diccionari de la llengua catalana [Dictionary of the Catalan Language] (in Catalan), second edition, Institute of Catalan Studies [Catalan: Institut d'Estudis Catalans], April 2007
• “parent”, in Gran Diccionari de la Llengua Catalana, Grup Enciclopèdia Catalana, 2025
• “parent” in Diccionari normatiu valencià, Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua.
• “parent” in Diccionari català-valencià-balear, Antoni Maria Alcover and Francesc de Borja Moll, 1962.

Inherited from Middle French parent, from Old French parent, from Latin parentem.

• IPA^(key): /pa.ʁɑ̃/

  • Audio:

    (file)

  • Audio (Quebec); [paˈʁã]:

    (file)

parent m (plural parents, feminine parente)

1. relative, relation, family member

   Nous devons toujours être aux côtés de nos parents et de nos amis.

   We must always stand by our family and our friends.

   • 1862, Victor Hugo, chapter 4, in Les Misérables, Tome I : Fantine, book 1:

     Une de ses parentes éloignées, madame la comtesse de Lô, laissait rarement échapper une occasion d'énumérer en sa présence ce qu'elle appelait «les espérances» de ses trois fils.

     One of his distant relatives, the countess of Lô, rarely missed an opportunity to list, in his presence, what she called her "hopes" for her three sons.

2. (North America, in the singular) parent
3. (in the plural) ancestors
4. (especially in the plural) parents

parent (feminine parente, masculine plural parents, feminine plural parentes)

1. related
2. similar

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

• IPA^(key): /paʁ/
• Homophones: pare, pares

parent

1. third-person plural present indicative/subjunctive of parer

• “parent”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

• arpent, râpent

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ˈpa.rɛnt]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [ˈpaː.ren̪t̪]

parent

1. third-person plural present active subjunctive of parō

pārent

1. third-person plural present active indicative of pāreō

From Old French parent.

parent m (plural parens)

1. parent

• French: parent

• pathent (Jersey)

From Old French parent, from Latin parēns, parentem, from pariō, parere (“bring forth, give birth to, produce”).

parent m (plural parents)

1. (Guernsey) parent

   Hyponyms: mère, père

From Latin parēns, parentem.

parent oblique singular, m (oblique plural parenz or parentz, nominative singular parenz or parentz, nominative plural parent)

1. parent

• → Middle English: parent
  • English: parent
• Middle French: parent
  • French: parent
• Norman: parent (Guernsey), pathent (Jersey)