daughter
UK /ˈdɔːtə/ · US /ˈdɔ.tɚ/ noun
Forms daughters daughtren dafter
- noun One’s female offspring. “I already have a son, so I would like to have a daughter.”
- noun A female descendant.
- noun A daughter language.
- noun (physics) A nuclide left over from radioactive decay.
- noun (syntax, of a parse tree) A descendant.
- noun (by extension) A female character of a creator.
- noun (informal, uncommon, sometimes derogatory) A familiar address to a female person from an older or otherwise more authoritative person.
Synonyms
Antonyms
Etymology
From Middle English doghter, doughter, from Old English dohtor (“daughter”), from Proto-West Germanic *dohter, from Proto-Germanic *duhtēr, from Proto-Indo-European *dʰugh₂tḗr.
Webster’s 1913
- noun The female offspring of the human species; a female child of any age; --applied also to the lower animals.
- noun A female descendant; a woman.
Etymology [OE. doughter, doghter, dohter, AS. dohtor, dohter; akin to OS. dohtar, D. dochter, G. tochter, Icel. d, Sw. dotter, Dan. dotter, datter, Goth. daúhtar,, OSlav. d, Russ. doche, Lith. dukt, Gr. , Zendughdhar, Skr. duhit; possibly originally, the milker, cf. Skr. duh to milk. sq. root68, 245.]
Sources: Wiktionary · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “daughter”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details