The words dad
Fathers Day 2016: This Is Where the Word 'Dad' Comes From
Of all the words we use our fathers—from pappy to old man—the most common American appellation is three little letters: dad. And with Father’s Day arriving this weekend, you may be wondering where that familiar word comes from.
The leading hypothesis is: babies.
“There’s unusual similarity in the words for mothers and fathers throughout the world,” says the Oxford English Dictionary’s Katherine Martin. “And that has to do with how babies start to vocalize.” Dad most probably comes from dada, which has a construction one can see reflected in other pater words like papa, tata, abba and baba.
To understand this, it is best that we do some things that might weird out the people around you. First, open your mouth and just push some air out. That noise, much like the one you make in the dentist’s chair, should sound a lot like the vowel sound one hears in mama, papa and those other words. Because it takes little thought or skill to make, that tends to be one of the first that babies babble. “Other vowels,” says linguist Gretchen McCulloch, “require more precise control.”
Now, make the “duh” sound. Feel how your tongue is on the roof of your mouth near the back of your teeth? Make the “puh” and “buh” sounds. Feel how that’s all in the lips? Do it one more time and notice how those sounds come from the front of your mouth rather than the back, compared to sounds like g’s “guh” or k’s “kuh.”
While babies have a hard time with those more complicated, back-of-the-mouth sounds—which is why it seems natural and adorable when Tweety Bird sees a “puddy tat” instead of a “kitty cat”—those front-of-the-mouth consonants are much easier for little baby faces to utter. Infants can see what adults do with their lips and imitate those lippy sounds, while, “if you’re doing stuff with your tongue, the easiest thing to do is just throw it up in the front,” McCulloch says.
Young humans also learn words better (even nonsensical ones) when there’s a repeated sound (though we don’t know exactly why).
All of which means that “dada” is a natural sound for babies to make. And, as another part of the theory goes, parents want to assume their babies know them by name even if their children are just babbling away. So those sounds have been assumed to be names for caregivers—and then reinforced as names for caregivers over generations.
So why do we think of females as “mama” and males as “dada” or “papa”? The easiest consonant sound to make, says Oxford’s Martin, is the “mmmmm” sound, one that is similar to the noise babies make when they’re nursing. And because women have tended to be the primary caregivers throughout history, that early sound has become associated with them, says McCulloch. Meanwhile, the babbles that tend to be gurgled up soon after that are associated with the person babies have come into contact with the second most: dads.
There are endless spins on these dad words. Papa, for instance, becomes not just pappy but pa, pop, pops, poppa, pa-paw and pop-pop.
Part of the reason for this is that people are downright playful with English. Part may be differences in accents and speech patterns from place to place. And another part is likely that, unlike most kinship terms (think: niece, cousin, brother), these words tend to stand in as quasi-names for the people they refer to, says Martin. “They can be really particular to a family or a region,” she says. “Dad and mom are the dominant ones, but families have their own individual practices too.”
Yet the overriding theme here is not difference but sameness. All the global variations on this theme—from tata in Poland to baba in South Asia—are evidence that despite different cultures, people share experiences of kinship, and that babies from every corner of the world at least start out having some things in common. The words that different languages use for father, like Spanish padre and German Vater, have been used to show the genetic relationship between languages themselves, too.
That widespread understanding of what it’s like to have a parent is part of the reason the word dad pops up so often in slang. Parent words are “really ripe for metaphors,” says McCulloch. “They have this relationship that everybody kind of understands.” At its best, that dad relationship boils down father-figures being the greatest in slang—or at least solid.
The most exemplary or outstanding example of something has been “the granddaddy of them all” for centuries. In the mid-1900s, jazz musicians began calling each other “daddy-o” to signal they were equals or friendly. And it’s become fashionable on social media to refer to public figures one admires as “mom” or “dad,” be that man Kanye West or Bernie Sanders. This “dad,” as linguist Ben Zimmer puts it, is usually “a man you’re not actually thinking of as being your father or being like your father but having qualities you respect.”
So whether your dad inspires you or embarrasses you, whether you are a mac daddy or a baby-daddy, whether you are a swingin’ daddy-o or the resigned owner of a dad bod, remember that you are in abundant company this Father’s Day.
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The Origin of "Dad" And Why Some Men Prefer to Be Called "Father"
The nicknames we use for parents go in and out of fashion age to age and era to era. At one time, men preferred “Sire.” Other times, “Father” was preferable. What we do know is that the most agreed upon way to refer to dad these days is by calling him, well, ‘dad.’
But why have we ditched ‘father’ for dad? The short answer is that things have gotten a little less formal. But the reason we’ve moved away from formality is that we’ve embraced what’s more linguistically natural for children and parents. ‘Father’ comes from the Proto-Indo-European “pəter” and Old English ‘fæder,’ meaning “he who begets a child,” reflecting the baby-talk sound “pa” as well as a phonetic shift from ‘p’ to ‘f’ in Middle English.
However, ‘dad’ did not evolve from ‘father.’
“It’s from ‘dada,’” says Professor John H. McWhorter, a professor at Columbia University, “a natural sound from children’s mouths as a second stab at consonants after they try the most natural ‘mama.
’ Next is often either ‘dada, ‘tata,’ ‘baba’ or … ‘papa.’ Upon which, ‘father’ starts in Proto-Indo-European as “puh-TAIR,” and the ‘puh’ part is this same thing: what started as ‘pa’ in ‘papa.’ The words for Mommy and Daddy are the closest thing to linguistic universals because they are about mouth anatomy in infants rather than thought.”
There are also another key reason why this is reinforced over time. Emie Tittnich, a specialist at the University of Pittsburgh, speaking to Live Science, noted that parents generally refrain from using pronouns like ‘I’ or ‘you’ to avoid confusing their kids with abstract concepts early on. “‘Parents will use [‘mommy’ and ‘daddy’] to help their children learn the role names and also to indicate the relationship, ‘mommy and me,'” says Tittnich. “It usually takes the child awhile to understand that the same person can be called two different names.”
The agreed-upon naturality of these linguistic principles mean that as American society has become more colloquial and secular over time, we move (at least in this instance) away from a term that’s reflective of a status quo based in rigid concepts of class and religion—one of the meanings of ‘fæder’ in Old English is ‘supreme being,’ according to the Online Etymology Dictionary.
As a result, we’re generally caught off guard when we hear a child refer to a parent as ‘father.’
However, this is not unanimously the case. We spoke with six dads who prefer — or simply stuck with — ‘father’ instead of ‘dad.’ Some do it as an homage to their own fathers; others do it to sound more authoritative. Others do it because it’s what their kids like. All have their reasons and, maybe, deep inside, some are just big fans of Proto-Indo-European language. Here’s what they say.
It’s What My Father Preferred
I sometimes worry that it sounds a little austere out loud, but it’s just what my father always asked us to call him, and it felt like it was important to me that we carry that on. No one in my family has had a problem with it. I think you can still be a ‘dad’ and be called ‘father,’ if that makes sense. It’s basically semantic, in that way, but it’s also more than semantics. — John, Baltimore, MD
Its What My Kid Decided to Call Me
It’s less of a request or a demand or anything, but when we were teaching my oldest what everything is called, we always just said ‘this is your mother’ and ‘this is your father,’ and he liked to say that, too.
So we’ve kept it. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think it was just adorably proper to have our little man coming up to us and saying “father, mother, may I use the bathroom,” or what have you. But as with everything, I don’t mind anything that seems to feel natural for my kids and makes them happy. — Eric, Austin, Texas
We’ve Always Been a More Traditional Family
My son didn’t start until he was older. I think he thought it sounded more respectful, or just more professional. We’ve always been a more traditional family, in how we carry ourselves, I guess you would say. So perhaps this was his way of taking that in stride, or contributing to that. My wife teases me about it sometimes. I should clarify, it’s generally him introducing me to other people that way. ‘This is my father, have you met my father?’ etc. — Patrick, Twin Cities, MN
It Just Sort of Stuck
In the past two years, my older daughter, age 21, began calling me ‘father’ and as strange as I found it, I didn’t mine it at all.
Now, my four-year-old calls me “father” and I guess I now have a new title. As long as I am not being called ‘Henry,’ I am okay with it. — Henry, Boston, MA
It’s a Bit More Authoritative
I have eight children—three boys and five girls. I’ve always asked that they call me ‘father’ not to be domineering but because the house could get a little chaotic, as you can imagine, and my wife and I felt that it was a label that was more authoritative and kept things from being too chaotic. ‘Please don’t touch your father’s golf clubs’ just has a better ring to it, I guess. — Elliott, Charlotte, NC
It Instills a Sense of Responsibility in Me
I love that my children call me ‘father,’ because of the sense of responsibility it instills in me. Your ‘dad’ or ‘daddy’ is there to lend you the car, your ‘father’ is there to raise you, and protect you and make sure that you have the tool you need to succeed in life. When my kids call me ‘father,’ it reignites that sense of purpose for me every day, and reminds me it’s up to me to make their world a great place to grow up in.
— Sam, Alachua Country, FL
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Word papa - synonyms in the dictionary
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Found 21 synonyms for . If there are not enough of them, then more can be found by clicking on the words.
Meaning of the word dad – (eng. dad) 1. m. Father (1) (usually in the speech of children). 2. m. Head of the Catholic Church.
| |
| Case | Singular | Plural |
|---|---|---|
| Nominative | dad | dads |
| Genitive | dads | dad |
| Dative | dad | dads |
| Accusative | papa | dad |
| Creative | daddy | dads |
| Prepositional | dad | papakh |
The word ❝dad❞ in Russian literature
– Listen, Naomi: now if your mom and dad could see where you are and what position you are in
Vasily Kamensky “27 adventures of Hort Joyce” 6 - Mommy! Mommy! What to walk! Dad! Go! - Well, go with Tikhon
Gippius Zinaida Nikolaevna “Suor Maria“
Write, comrades, which of you has a father with a hernia and what kind of wood do you cook dinner on
Averchenko Arkady Timofeevich “Communion”
9001 bring Lida home, - said the old man, pushing Lida to the house Kharms Daniil Ivanovich ““ Lida was squatting .
..”
Moms, dads, aunts - big, noisy, cheerful - called the children ) “Nowhere”- Dad, - said Vadka, - dad, will you play Chapaev again? “Well, of course I will,” said GairanskyKassil Lev Abramovich “President von Walter and his son”
Huh? Dad! Or go somewhere every day to the serviceKassil Lev Abramovich “Transbalt”
She said in delirium: - Dad arrivedGarin-Mikhailovsky Nikolai Georgievich “Adochka”
And after 4 (four) months - in March, I came to a house on business and heard a girl whisper: - Mom ... There, some tattered one came to dadBulgakov Mikhail Afanasyevich “Akathist to our quality“
Swallows were replaced by larks, larks by quails, and so it went on until Pope Innokenty himself arrived called dad, brought three glass, very beautiful caps, poured beer into them and put them on plates ... Then the most prudent flies came across
Mamin-Sibiryak Dmitry Narkisovich “Alenushkiny Tales”
"This is a perversion." Moscow responded to the words of the Pope of Rome about the cruelty of the Buryats and Chechens
Pope Francis said that the military from Buryatia and Chechnya show the greatest cruelty during a special operation in Ukraine. The Russian Foreign Ministry believes that such statements are no longer even Russophobia, but a perversion of the truth. And the governor of Buryatia, Tsydenov, said that it was “at least strange” to hear such assessments from the Pope about specific nationalities. Less than a month ago, Francis confessed his love for the Russian people and declared their greatness. nine0003
In a interview with the Christian magazine America , Pope Francis called the inhabitants of two Russian regions - Buryatia and Chechnya - the most cruel during armed operations in the special operation zone in Ukraine.
Answering a question about his position on what is happening in Ukraine, the pontiff said that the Ukrainian people can be compared to those who were martyred.
“When I talk about Ukraine, I talk about brutality, because I have a lot of information about the brutality of the troops there. As a rule, the most cruel Russians are those who are not close to the Russian tradition, such as Chechens, Buryats, and so on,” Francis said. nine0003
The Pope noted that he often tries not to specify names and specific personalities so as not to offend anyone. And he said that on the second day after the start of the special operation, he turned to the Russian embassy and announced his readiness to act as a negotiator between Moscow and Kyiv. “Sergey Lavrov, Minister of Foreign Affairs, replied with a very nice letter, from which I understood that this is not necessary yet,” Francis specified.
At the same time, the pontiff added that the Vatican has always adhered to a peaceful position and strategy.
“The position of the Holy See is to seek peace and seek mutual understanding. The diplomacy of the Holy See is moving in this direction and, of course, is always ready to mediate,” Francis said. nine0003
The statements of the head of the Catholic Church caused an almost immediate reaction from the Russian authorities.
“This is no longer Russophobia, this is a perversion, I don't even know what level. Remember, in the nineties and early 2000s, we were told exactly the opposite, that these are Russians, Slavs, who are torturing the peoples of the Caucasus, and now we are being told that it is the peoples of the Caucasus who are torturing the Russians.
You have to be perverts of the truth,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told during a round table in the Federation Council. nine0003
Governor of Buryatia Alexei Tsydenov, in response to the words of the pontiff , noted that servicemen from this region fulfill their duty with honor, protect and protect the civilian population and treat prisoners of war with humanity and mercy.
“To hear an assessment from the head of the Catholic Church about the cruelty of specific nationalities — namely the Buryats and Chechens, protecting the civilian population — is at least strange,” the head of the region added.
Tsydenov recalled that there were many cases in history when cities, countries and peoples were destroyed by those who considered themselves representatives of civilized nations. As an example, he cited the genocide of the indigenous peoples of North America, the Crusades. nine0003
“You don't have to go far into history. The capital of a European state - the city of Belgrade - or the whole state of Libya were bombed without the participation of the Buryats, Chechens and other peoples of Great Russia," the governor wrote.
In his opinion, the Pope knows about all these cases. And if he especially noted the warriors from Buryatia, it means that they are doing their job well.
Since the beginning of the special military operation, the Vatican has repeatedly advocated peace talks between the conflicting parties and offered mediation services.
The last time this happened the day before: on November 27, the Archbishop, Secretary for External Relations (acting as Minister of Foreign Affairs) of the Vatican, Paul Richard Gallagher, in an interview with the Italian TV channel Mediaset said that the Vatican was ready to become a platform for negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. nine0003
“The Holy Father would welcome this very positively if the request came from both sides with all good intentions and in the spirit of seeking peace, dialogue and ending the war,” Gallagher added.
At the beginning of November, Francis confessed his love for both the Russian and Ukrainian peoples. “I have great respect for the Russian people, Russian humanism. Just think of Dostoevsky, who still inspires us, inspires Christians to think about Christianity,” he told reporters, returning after an official visit to Bahrain. The pontiff stressed that cruelty is not characteristic of the Russians, because they are "a great people.
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