Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Not paternal; not befitting a father.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Maybe it was unpaternal to cast Aidan loose; after all, since we didn't live together, Facebook was potentially another way in which the two of us could bond.

    Gay Dad 2011

  • Proof of this unpaternal attitude lies, first, in the manner in which he disposed of his daughters: it was a case of sale (makhar -- "he sold"), and their mode of referring to it indicates that the daughters knew a better mode of giving in marriage to have been the custom even in their day.

    Exposition of Genesis: Volume 1 1892-1972 1942

  • But in our day we cannot but feel the strongest aversion to so unpaternal an attitude.

    Exposition of Genesis: Volume 1 1892-1972 1942

  • If Hunt felt that there was anything cynically unpaternal in this father planning for his daughter a career of crime, he gave no sign of it.

    Children of the Whirlwind Leroy Scott 1902

  • "I think him everything harsh and unpaternal when politics is the subject of conversation," replied that young lady guardedly.

    An Algonquin Maiden A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada A. Ethelwyn Wetherald 1898

  • Which was severe but dignified, unpaternal yet patrician.

    The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes Israel Zangwill 1895

  • Which was severe but dignified, unpaternal yet patrician.

    Merely Mary Ann Israel Zangwill 1895

  • I suppose, was a white man, though I know nothing of him; for, with the most unpaternal feeling, he deserted me.

    Autobiography of a female slave, 1857

  • An unpaternal government had allowed a ship to undertake a voyage of twelve thousand miles, with a short crew, short provisions, and just twice as many passengers as could be protected from the weather.

    It Is Never Too Late to Mend Charles Reade 1849

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