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:
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
Her great-grandfather Hawa Singh was one of Indian boxing's early giants.
From BBC ● Jul. 26, 2026
Ms. Crabapple’s great-grandfather, Samuel Rothbort, was a Russian-born Bundist who, after tangling with local thugs, immigrated to the U.S. and became a painter and chicken farmer.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 14, 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
When the great-grandfather died Aureliano stopped going by the house, but he would run into Nigromanta under the dark almond trees on the square, using her wild-animal whistles to lure the few night owls.
From "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
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
"People have to know what our great-grandfathers, our grandfathers and grandmothers went through... as many are beginning to forget what May 9 is and what it stands for."
From Reuters ● May 7, 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
How much can men bear to keep together the nation their great-grandfathers had helped to create?
From "Across Five Aprils" by Irene Hunt
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.
