unfather

English

Etymology

From un- +‎ father.

Noun

unfather (plural unfathers)

1. A man who is not a father.
   • 1994, David Collings, Wordsworthian errancies: the poetics of cultural dismemberment:

     But this delugic force is not truly akin to those unfathers until Wordsworth recovers from total loss and, in a moment of specular identification, recognizes in that errant power the face of his own soul: "And now recovering, to my Soul I say/'I recognise thy glory'"

   • 1997, Humane Health Care International - Volume 13, page 31:

     With the increasing numbers of unfathers and unmothers, churches need ceremonies that aid acceptance, thank medical professionals for valiant attempts, promote courage to face a childless future and remind them of the omnipresence of the Therapeutic Presence.

   • 2014, Brando Skyhorse, Take This Man: A Memoir, page 197:

     Instead of three fathers rooting for me when I made my processional entrance into the football stadium and onto an immense green field to collect my empty diploma case, there was Rudy, an unfather, somewhere in a blurry sea of cardinal red

Verb

unfather (third-person singular simple present unfathers, present participle unfathering, simple past and past participle unfathered)

1. To cause someone to become less of a father.
   • 1978, Plays and Players - Issue 1; Issue 26, page 46:

     A son no son, unfathers me. Earth, sky and deep, rise, come, be father for me: ascend before him into the day, to cover him from all his light, and your annihilation fall on him!

   • 2000, Gilbert Meilaender, Things that Count: Essays Moral and Theological, page 234:

     More strongly still: "Visitation unfathers men. This phenomenon gradually strangles the father-child relationship."

2. To cause someone to be fatherless.
   • 1979, “CR. The Centennial Review - Volume 23”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name), number 358:

     Some of these feelings, in all their confusion, press into the flamboyant statement with which he unfathers Cordelia at 1.1.116: The barbarous Scythian Or he that makes his generation messes To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom Be as well neighbour'd, pitied, and relieved, As thou my sometime daughter.

   • 1988, J. Douglas Kneale, Monumental writing: aspects of rhetoric in Wordsworth's poetry:

     Yet how is the unfathering related to usurpation? Is the situation as Oedipal as its rhetoric suggests? Oedipus encounters and kills a traveler on the road outside Thebes, and by doing so unfathers himself.

   • 1991, Mary Lynn Broe, Silence and Power: A Reevaluation of Djuna Barnes, page 88:

     Wendell's mother unfathers him twice-over (through dislike of her first husband) by giving him her maiden name and claiming his conception was immaculate (R, 20, 46-47).