paterfamilias
Americannoun
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the male head of a household or family, usually the father.
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Roman Law.
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the head of the Roman family; a juridical entity who holds the patria potestas.
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a person who is not under the patria potestas of another.
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noun
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the male head of a household
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Roman law
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the head of a household having authority over its members
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the parental or other authority of another person
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Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of paterfamilias
1425–75; late Middle English < Latin: literally, father (i.e., master) of the household, with archaic genitive form familiās of familia; see family
Explanation
A paterfamilias is the male head of a family, clan, or tribe. If you consider your grandfather to be the head of your family, you can call him a paterfamilias. The word paterfamilias comes from ancient Roman law. The word itself is Latin, combining pater, "father," and familias, "family." In other words, he was the father of the family — and in Rome, that meant that he had legal rights to everything the family owned and authority over each of its members. These days, the paterfamilias is more likely to simply preside over family reunions and hold grandchildren on his knee.
Vocabulary lists containing paterfamilias
Ancient Rome - Middle School and High School
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The Roman Republic, Lessons 3–4
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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:
Ms. Cheever began to understand that his stories came at least partly from the tension between his private feelings of shame and the effort to maintain his respectability as a literary grandee and paterfamilias.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 17, 2025
He walked on stage, now the proud paterfamilias with greying hair and a broad welcoming smile on his face as he surveyed the nearly full house.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 6, 2025
They’re going to take place in the family circle, which is evident when the paterfamilias starts listing the order of his favorite sons while they’re chowing down at the breakfast table.
From New York Times ● Dec. 21, 2023
There were meant to be so many rebels that they could be split into 'five families', a label that even one paterfamilias privately lamented "makes us look ridiculous".
From BBC ● Dec. 13, 2023
And nor did I mistake for long Pierrot, much shriveled and with a shining pate I wanted to put my hand on, but still twinkly as ever and very much the paterfamilias.
From "Atonement" by Ian McEwan
It is the so-called decent people, the noble paterfamiliases, the irreproachable husbands, the loving brothers.
From Yama: the pit by Guerney, Bernard Guilbert
These dreams of bliss, put into facile verse yet adorned with a certain poetic gravity, caused some anxiety among the paterfamiliases.
From The Fourth Estate, vol. 2 by Palacio Vald?s, Armando
Jhabvala’s early fiction sauntered into middle-class Hindu households and wryly took the measure of their dramatic capacity: shy newlyweds and demanding mothers-in-law, pompous patresfamilias, feckless sons, and snooping aunties.
From The New Yorker ● Dec. 31, 2018
Only Bryce Gill as the good brother and, at times, Philip Goodwin as various patresfamilias rise above the blustery racket that engulfs the rest of the seven-member cast.
From New York Times ● Mar. 27, 2011
Isn't it rather the fault of the audience, of your respectable residents, your patresfamilias?
From The Possessed (The Devils) by Dostoyevsky, Fyodor
And what do our patresfamilias, the officials, the wives and daughters, do in such cases?
From The Possessed (The Devils) by Dostoyevsky, Fyodor
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.
