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Definition of "grandfather" []

  • The father of one's mother or father. (noun)
  • A forefather; an ancestor. (noun)
  • To exempt (one involved in an activity or business) from new regulations: The new ordinance restricts the size of billboards, but it grandfathers those erected before 1997. (verb-transitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "grandfather" in a sentence
  • "For example, whereas the Hebrew phrase for ‘my grandfather' was sav-í ‘grandfather + 1st person singular possessive', in Israeli it is sába shel-ì ‘grandfather of me'."
  • "In the first book, Three Wishes, Rose, the main character, an orphan who falls into a real-life fairytale when she discovers her grandfather is a wealthy French count, starts a blog, also called Three Wishes, for an English assignment."
  • "Your child will grow up to learn his grandfather is the guy who helped orchestrate the torture program in Amercia, destroying American credibility in the process, and who also obtained an apology from a man who he shot in the face."