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Paterfamilias   Listen
Paterfamilias

noun
(pl. pateresfamilias)
1.
The male head of family or tribe.  Synonym: patriarch.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Paterfamilias" Quotes from Famous Books



... see me circulate amid the crowd, radiating affability and laughter, liberal with my sweetmeats and cigars. I say unblushing things to hobble-dehoy girls, tell shy young persons this is the married people's boat, roguishly ask the abstracted if they are thinking of their sweethearts, offer paterfamilias a cigar, am struck with the beauty and grow curious about the age of mamma's youngest, who (I assure her gaily) will be a man before his mother; or perhaps it may occur to me, from the sensible expression of her face, that she is a person of good counsel, and I ask ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... party, and write home that 'it is delightful, that there is a refreshing disregard for what people may think at French watering-places, and a charming absence of self-consciousness that disarms criticism'! What does quiet paterfamilias think about his mermaid daughter, and of that touch about the 'absence of self-consciousness;' and would anything induce him to clothe himself in a light-green skin, to put on a pair of 'human fins,' or to perch ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn

... specific acts of hostility, but "because we look on in a most aggravating fashion." This is truly funny! One country may steal a—Tonkin, but another may not look over a boundary! Prince HENRY presents a peculiarly close parallel to KEENE'S infuriated (and incoherent) Paterfamilias, who angrily commanded his silent son "not to look at him ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, March 4, 1893 • Various

... know, paterfamilias goes by the name of the “purse.” The more one sees of American households the more appropriate that name appears. Everything is expected of the husband, and he is accorded no definite place in return. He leaves the house at ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory

... saw a neat letter to the papers—the sort of thing he dictated to Woodville, and never sent—about "Flowers and Our Four-footed Favourites," signed "Paterfamilias." He was proud of his well-turned phrases, but, though pompous, he was not persistent, and when his secretary had once heard these rigmaroles, and their author had seen them in type—I mean typewriting—Sir James felt ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson

... I to do? The absolute magnitude of my misfortune only loomed upon me by degrees. The twenty minutes allowed by that stern old paterfamilias were already gone and I had done nothing towards dressing. And indeed it was impossible that I should do anything that would be of avail. I could not go down to dinner in my stocking feet, nor could I put on my black dress trousers, over ...
— The O'Conors of Castle Conor from Tales from all Countries • Anthony Trollope

... PATERFAMILIAS—None whatever. He is liable for direct damage both to your chimneys and any collateral damage caused by fall of bricks into garden, etc., etc. Bodily inconvenience and mental anguish may be included, but the average jury are not, as a rule, men of sentiment. If you can prove ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling

... the place, it is ever the same thing; Poor Paterfamilias always must suffer. A dyspeptic, a costly, a lame and a tame thing Is Holiday-time ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 23, 1892 • Various

... alacrity, which gives me the opportunity of slipping out at back-door, and taking quiet ramble by myself. When will Paterfamilias himself turn up? I have not seen or heard from Mr. BRISTOL ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 6, 1890 • Various

... said the august paterfamilias, spreading at ease in his chair in the drawing-room, when the girls were gone. Leonora removed her bangles and began to play 'The Bees' Wedding.' But she had not proceeded far ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett

... as sad there as everywhere else. Of course, the evergreens were pretty, and the music fine; but all around me were happy groups of people, who could scarcely keep down merry Christmas long enough to do reverence to sacred Christmas. And nobody was alone but me. Every happy paterfamilias in his pew tantalized me, and the whole atmosphere of the place seemed so much better suited to every one else than me that I came away hating holidays worse than ever. Then I went to the play, and sat down in a box all alone by myself. Everybody seemed on the best ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various

... simple objurgation,—it prefaces a sermon. My candour obliges me to confess that this is the mode in which the hateful monosyllable is more usually employed by the marital part of the one flesh; and has something about it of the odious assumption of the Petruchian paterfamilias—the head of the family—boding, not perhaps "peace and love, and quiet life," but certainly "awful rule ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... country, would he not have been welcome to thy table? Wouldst thou have avoided him at his club, thou reader from the West-end? Has he not settled himself respectably, thou grey-haired, novel-reading paterfamilias, thou materfamilias, with daughters of thine own to be married? In life would he have been held to have disgraced himself,—except in the very moment in which he seemed to be in danger? Nevertheless, ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope

... society for suppressing excrescences! Your president tells me you are at present inquiring for the address of the man who signs himself 'Paterfamilias' in the 'Times'; but the letters from 'A British ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie

... man not privileged, whether he be paterfamilias, (heorthfest,[A]) or pedissequa, (folghere,[B]) must enter into the hundred and tithing, and all above twelve to swear he will not be a thief or consenting to a ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... assembled that evening at the table of the worthy paterfamilias did not certainly look like one over which hung the shadow of "transportation." The talk was of "Tubs" and Harriers, of tennis and "Sociables," of Virgil and Euclid; and as the first shyness of their introduction wore off, the "Firm" settled down to ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed

... blood!" mused the Major, as he drove back to the Hotel National. That very evening he revenged himself upon the callous-hearted stranger, by a reckless flirtation with the Misses Phenie and Genie Forbes, still of Chicago. It was not a matter of concern to any one but Paterfamilias Forbes that the Major indulged in a stolen moonlight excursion upon the lake in charge of two extremely prononcee Daisy Millers. The Major's slumbers, however, were of the lightest, for the face of the chance-met ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... solemnity and beauty,—and in the neighbouring mosque, the loudly intoned Amin and Allaho Akbar,—far superior to any organ,—rang in my ear. The evening gun of camp was represented by the Nakkarah, or kettle-drum, sounded about seven P.M. at the southern gate; and at ten a second drumming warned the paterfamilias that it was time for home, and thieves, and lovers,—that it was the hour for bastinado. Nightfall was ushered in by the song, the dance, and the marriage festival,—here no permission is required for "native music in the lines,"—and muffled figures ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton

... in every possible way, and then they still term them nice pretty girls. They're so concocted that there's not even a semblance of truth in them. From the very first, they canvass the families of the gentry. If the paterfamilias isn't a president of a board; then he's made a minister. The heroine is bound to be as lovable as a gem. This young lady is sure to understand all about letters, and propriety. She knows every thing and is, in a word, a peerless beauty. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... knocking, Pep sat up straight in his chair. "Come in, whoever you are!" He gave the invitation with the dignity of a Roman paterfamilias, absolute master of his house. The door was ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez



Words linked to "Paterfamilias" :   head of household, patriarch, adult male, man



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