great-grandfather
Americannoun
-
great-grandfathers
plural
Usage
What does great-grandfather mean? A great-grandfather is the father of a person’s grandparent (the grandfather of a person’s parent). When a father’s child has their own children, that father becomes a grandfather. When those children have their own children, he becomes a great-grandfather. Should great-grandfather be capitalized?Great-grandfather should be capitalized when it’s used as a proper name, as in Please tell Great-grandfather that I miss him. But great-grandfather does not need to be capitalized when it’s simply used as a way to refer to him, as in Please tell my great-grandfather that I miss him. Example: My kids were lucky enough to get to know three of their great-grandfathers.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of great-grandfather
First recorded in 1505–15
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
His great-grandfather moved to the village and used a patch of land in the nearby peninsula for grazing, he said.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 9, 2026
In 1998, scientific analysis of a DNA sample from Dorothy’s maternal uncle confirmed that her third great-grandfather, Eston, was Jefferson’s youngest child by Hemings.
From Salon ● Jul. 27, 2026
For years he had been searching for information about his great-grandfather who he heard had gone to war and had never come back.
From BBC ● Jul. 6, 2026
Like her great-grandfather Shrewlock Holmes, Minerva has something of a cerebral streak.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 12, 2026
They had first been played with by Palmer’s great-grandfather, then by his grandfather, then his father.
From "Wringer" by Jerry Spinelli
Mwaba comes from a family of miners - his great-grandfathers and one grandfather worked down the mines and his father above the ground.
From BBC ● Jul. 25, 2025
We search for clues and craft paragraphs that give a hint to how soldiers and sailors — who could have shared a beer with our fathers, grandfathers or great-grandfathers — lived their short lives.
From Seattle Times ● May 28, 2023
Two of Mr. Kara-Murza’s great-grandfathers were executed as spies and “enemies of the people” during Stalin’s purges, according to Meduza, a Russian news website.
From New York Times ● Apr. 17, 2023
One of his great-grandfathers was enslaved before fighting in the Civil War and serving as a minister.
From Washington Post ● Jan. 17, 2022
A gift for a great-grandfather from North Dakota, maybe for all great-grandfathers.
From "Crash" by Jerry Spinelli
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
