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paternity

noun

Simple meaning

Fatherhood, being a father.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

puhturnihtee

Say the bold part a little louder.

US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

pəˈtɝnɪti

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

  1. Fatherhood, the state or quality of being a father.

    “Tests were conducted to determine paternity.”

  2. Parental descent from a father.

  3. figuratively

    Authorship.

  4. law

    Legal acknowledgement of a man's fatherhood of a child.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
B2 · Upper Intermediate (estimated)
Frequency
Uncommon
Formality
Technical

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: Fatherhood, the state or quality of being a father.

Used this way, paternity is a common word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.

Heard in a sentence
“Tests were conducted to determine paternity.”
Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Common
Connotation
Matter-of-fact
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

More ways to use paternity

  • “Tests were conducted to determine paternity.”noun

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

paternity leavepaternity suitpaternity testpaternity actionestablishing paternitydivine paternitybiological paternitypaternity establishment

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Word family

Words built from the same root.

  • paternaladjectiveDerived adjective

    Belonging to or inherited from one's father.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • paternity suitnounCompound term

    A lawsuit filed to determine the father of a child born out of wedlock (and to provide for the support of the child once paternity is determined).

  • paternity testnounCompound term

    A test based on blood groups to determine whether a particular man could be the biological father of a particular child.

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.