dad
Meanings
- A father, a male parent.
- Used to address one's father; often capitalized.
- Used to address an older adult male.
- To be a father to; to parent.
- To act like a dad.
- A lump or piece.
- A blow; act of striking something.
- To throw against something; to dash.
- Alternative form of daad (“Arabic letter ض”).
- One’s father.
- A designation on prerecorded compact discs indicating that the contents were recorded in digital but mixed in analog before being mastered to a digital medium.
- Acronym of diffuse alveolar damage.
- Acronym of Dutch angel dragon.
- Initialism of Dragon Age: Dreadwolf (early title of Dragon Age: The Veilguard).
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
From Early Modern English dadd, dadde (circa 1500), undoubtedly older, from unrecorded Middle English *dadde, of uncertain ultimate origin. Compare West Frisian deite (“dad, daddy”), Swabian Dede (“Godfather”). * Perhaps of Celtic origin, compare Welsh and Breton tad (from Proto-Brythonic *tad), Old Irish data; and possibly related to Russian дя́дя (djádja, “uncle”) and/or Russian де́душка (déduška, “grandfather”), all imitative. In Welsh, when subject to soft mutation (which occurs in vocative contexts, among others), tad becomes dad. * Perhaps imitative of a child's first uttered syllables da, da. * Possibly from a metathetic variation of a hypothetical Old English *ætta, *atta (“father”), from Proto-West Germanic *attō, from Proto-Germanic *attô ("father, forefather"; whence also North Frisian ate, aatj, taatje, tääte (“father; dad”), Middle High German tate (“father, dad”) (whence German Tate (“dad”), Bavarian tatte (“dad”), Cimbrian tatta (“dad”)), Icelandic táta (“dad”)), from Proto-Indo-European *átta (“father”), whence Sanskrit तत (tata, “father”).