daughter Hear it!

daughter Definition

daugh·ter (dôtər)

noun

  1. a girl or woman as she is related to either or both parents: sometimes also used of animals
  2. a female descendant
    1. a stepdaughter
    2. an adopted daughter
    3. a daughter-in-law
  3. a female thought of as having been formed by some influence, as a child is by a parent a daughter of the French Revolution
  4. anything thought of as like a daughter in relation to its source or origin colonies are daughters of the mother country
  5. Physics an element that results immediately from the disintegration of a radioactive element

Etymology: ME doughter < OE dohtor, akin to Goth dauhtar, Ger tochter < IE base *dhugheter > Sans duhitár, Gr thugatēr

daughter Synonyms

daughter

n.

female child, girl, offspring, descendant, stepdaughter, heiress, female dependent, infant, her mother's daughter*, apple of her father's eye*; see also child, girl 1.

daughter Usage Examples

Converse of object

  • marry: Their next daughter married John Murdoch, merchant in Glasgow, and had issue.
  • adopt: They had no children of their own but adopted a daughter who was named Eleanor.
  • bear: Eventually he married a slave woman, and they bore a daughter Kizzy.
  • sire: The first was a February born group 2 Loosebeare Imp sired daughter out of a Glenside His Nibs bred mother.
  • woo: My daughters wooed, engaged and married by _machinery!_ And you're only eighteen; do you hear me?

Preposition: into

  • slavery: Q. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as it suggests in Exodus 21:7.

Adjective modifier

  • eldest: I went to primary school with his eldest daughter Maureen.
  • teenage: Dawn says she had a friend who had a teenage daughter with learning disabilities who was helped by Mencap.
  • elder: The elder daughter Megan married and started a family, so we moved to Cheadle ( Staffs ) to be near them.
  • year-old: Case study: Miss P is a lone parent with a two year-old daughter.
  • loving: Our loving daughter just wiped out, gone from our lives.
  • three-year-old: My three-year-old daughter has not had chicken pox but is also showing no symptoms.

Modifies a noun

  • Isabella: He works from his home in Oxfordshire where he lives with his wife Laura, daughter Isabella and dog Pepper.

Noun used with modifier

  • O: This is my lover, this my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem.
  • baby: Emma Emma has a beautiful baby daughter, Lauren.

Possessives

  • wedding: I bought a £ 200 display kit from you a couple of weeks ago for my daughter's wedding last Saturday.

Possessives

  • vicar: And one young man has seen the vicar's daughter in the cemetary at midnight, dancing with the devil.
  • preacher: Lorna Want is pretty and blond and sings nicely, which is really all the badly-written role of the preacher's daughter allows for.

Preposition: of

  • king: The truce was cemented by a marriage between Richard and Isabel of France, daughter of the French king, now Charles VI.
  • clergyman: She was the daughter of a clergyman, but found it heard to embrace traditional Christianity.
daughter Quotes

   In marrying, a man does not, to be sure, marry his wife's mother; and yet a prudent man, when he begins to think of the daughter, would look sharp at the mother; ay, and back to the grandmother too, and along the whole female line of ancestry.

—Edgeworth, Maria

But you are dull, nothing comes nimbly from you; you dance like a plumber's daughter and deserve two thousand pound in lead to your marriage, and not in goldsmith's ware.

—Middleton,Thomas

At me you smiled, but unbeguiled I saw the snare, and I retired: The daughter of a hundred Earls, You are not one to be desired.

—Tennyson

I am the daughter of Earth and Water, And the nursling of the Sky; I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; I change, but I cannot die, For after the rain when with never a stain The pavilion of Heaven is bare, And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams Build up the blue dome of air, I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, And out of the caverns of rain, Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I arise and unbuild it again.

—Shelley, Percy Bysshe

A daughter of the gods, divinely tall, And most divinely fair.

—Tennyson

I am proud that I am an Australian, a daughter of the Southern Cross, a child of the mighty bush. I am thankful I am a peasant, a part of the bone and muscle of my nation, and earn my bread by the sweat of my brow, as man was meant to do. I rejoice I was not born a parasite, one of the blood-suckers who loll on velvet and satin, crushed from the proceeds of human sweat and blood and souls.

—of Bin Bin

Don't put your daughter on the stage, Mrs Worthington, Don't put your daughter on the stage.

—Coward, Sir Noe«  l Peirce

So I fell in love with a rich attorney's Elderly, ugly daughter.

—Gilbert, Sir W(illiam) S(chwenck)

   The frolic wind that breathes the spring, Zephyr with Aurora playing, As he met her once a-Maying, There on beds of violets blue, And fresh-blown roses washed in dew, Filled her with a daughter fair, So buxom, blithe, and debonair.

—Milton,John

Gigantic daughter of the West, We drink to thee across the flood, We know thee most, we love thee best, For art thou not of British blood?

—Tennyson

Then the wet, winding roads, Brown bogs with black water; And my thoughts on white ships And the King o' Spain's daughter.

—Colum, Padraic

   And there had Arthure the firste syght of queene Gwenyvere, the kyngis doghter of the londe of Camylarde, and ever afftir he loved hir.

—Malory, SirThomas   d.1471

Dios so¤  lo nos tiene aqu |¤ prestados, en este valle de la¤  grimas no estamos ma¤  s que de paso. Si llegara alg u¤ n d|¤a a pensar que ha perdido a su hija para el mundo de los hombres, la habra¤   ganado para el de los a¤  ngeles. God has us here only on loan, we are transitory in this vale of tears. If you ever come to think that you have lost your daughter to the world of men, think also that you have given her to that of the angels.

—Ferre¤  , Rosario

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.

—Bible (NewTestament)

This infant whose middle Is diapered still Will want to marry My daughter Jill. Oh sweet be his slumber and moist his middle! My dreams, I fear, are infanticiddle.

—Nash, (Frederic) Ogden

In the moonlight and the starlight, Fair Nokomis bore a daughter. And she called her name Wenonah, As the first-born of her daughters.

—Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

Love without hope, as when the young bird-catcher Swept off his tall hat to the Squire's own daughter, So let the imprisoned larks escape and fly Singing about her head, as she rode by.

—Graves, Robert von Ranke

To my daughter Leonora without whose never-failing sympathy and encouragement this book would have been finished in half the time.

—Plum

Browse dictionary entries near daughter

  1. Daugavpils
  2. Daudet
  3. Daubigny
  4. daube
  5. daub
  6. dau
  7. datura
  8. datum
  9. dato
  10. dative bond
  1. daughter cell
  2. daughter-in-law
  3. daughterly
  4. Daumier
  5. daunt
  6. dauntless
  7. dauphin
  8. Dauphiné
  9. dauphine
  10. daut