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• pater
  pater

  noun

  father.
• Pater
  Pater

  noun

  Walter Horatio, 1839–94, English critic, essayist, and novelist.

pater

¹ American  

[pey-ter, pat-er] / ˈpeɪ tər, ˈpæt ər /

noun

• paters
  plural

1. British Informal. father.

2. (often initial capital letter) the paternoster; Lord's Prayer.

3. a recitation of it.

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Pater ² American  

[pey-ter] / ˈpeɪ tər /

noun

1. Walter Horatio, 1839–94, English critic, essayist, and novelist.

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Pater ¹ British  

/ ˈpeɪtə /

noun

1. Walter ( Horatio ). 1839–94, English essayist and critic, noted for his prose style and his advocation of the "love of art for its own sake". His works include the philosophical romance Marius the Epicurean (1885), Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873), and Imaginary Portraits (1887)

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pater ² British  

/ ˈpeɪtə /

noun

1. facetious a public school slang word for father

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• paters
  plural

Etymology

Origin of pater

1300–50; Middle English < Latin: father

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

pater Pater paters

For instance, we find closely matching terms in Latin with "pater," Sanskrit's "pitar" and in Greek with "patér" – all older languages that developed separately from the Germanic line.

From Salon ● Jun. 18, 2022

Yet critics maintain that the Packers have betrayed not only the country but also the pater familias of football: legendary Green Bay coach Vince Lombardi.

From Slate ● Sep. 30, 2017

Cosby set Constand up on a meeting with Lou Weiss, a pater familias of the old WMA who retired in 2007.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 11, 2017

Putin himself, a father figure to his proteges, would then become a pater patriae, or, to use a Singaporean formula, a president mentor.

From The Guardian ● Mar. 27, 2017

A fissure ran across the length of the ceiling and the far end of the cavern collapsed, burying the altar and the pater.

From "The Mark of Athena" by Rick Riordan

Seits and Pater won their final five matches and finished 12-1 as a pair this season.

From Seattle Times ● May 5, 2024

"I was surprised by how quickly clouds disappeared on Neptune," de Pater added.

From Salon ● Aug. 25, 2023

No. What was happening instead is that Monet’s painting was becoming increasingly poetic, closer and closer to abstraction and to what the critic Walter Pater called “the condition of music.”

From Washington Post ● Feb. 1, 2023

“We really hadn’t expected it to be this good, to be honest,” Imke de Pater, an astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley who headed the Jupiter work, said in a news release.

From New York Times ● Aug. 23, 2022

In his hand was the bread knife that Pater Lumley had used to make sandwiches.

From "The Long-Lost Home" by Maryrose Wood

This single parent language – known as Proto Indo-European – spawned all these later languages and their shared word for paters.

From Salon ● Jun. 18, 2022

“Good man. But best not mention it to”—Hugo nodded through the garage wall—“the maters and the paters, or we'll spend the rest of the afternoon playing Ludo or the Game of Life under strict supervision.”

From "Black Swan Green" by David Mitchell

Wanders, fool? her madnessIs worth a million of your paters, mumbledAt every station between— Eliz. 

From The Saint's Tragedy by Charles Kingsley

He made the cave fur himself an' lived there, an' ivery day he'd say tin thousand paters, an' five thousand aves, an' a thousand craydos, an' thin go out among the poor.

From Irish Wonders by D. R. (David Russell) McAnally

That will surprise the paters when they return to grub.

From The Fiery Totem A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West by C. F. Argyll Saxby