daughter
Pluraldaughters
- 1
- 2A female descendant of a person or family, at any remove.
Every daughter of the house had been married from that chapel.
Through her grandmother's line, she was a daughter of the clan that had held the valley for centuries.
UsageUsually a daughter of followed by an ancestor, family, or people: a Daughter of Eve.
Similardescendant
Oppositeson
Note
Here the word reaches past one generation to a whole line. In C. S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950), the faun hails Lucy as a Daughter of Eve, naming her as human by her descent.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 4 facts
- C. S. Lewis wrote The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. fadedpage.com
- The book was first published in 1950. openlibrary.org
- The faun addresses Lucy as Daughter of Eve. fadedpage.com
- The address identifies Lucy as human. fadedpage.com
- 3A woman regarded as part of a place, people, or group, or as molded by it, most often her hometown or native country.
The mayor unveiled a statue honoring the town's most celebrated daughter.
A daughter of the labor movement, she spent forty years organizing textile workers.
UsageOften a daughter of a place or group, or the town's famous daughter.
Less common meanings
- 4A female character regarded as the offspring of her creator.
Of all Dickens's daughters, Little Nell was the one readers mourned.
The novelist spoke of her heroine as a daughter she had raised over ten drafts.
Similarcreation
- 5A language that developed from an earlier parent language; a daughter language.
Romanian is the easternmost daughter of Latin.
Linguists compare the daughters to reconstruct what the parent must have sounded like.
UsageUsually a daughter of the parent language; also daughter language.
Similardescendant, offshoot
Oppositeparent
- 6In physics, a nuclide produced by the radioactive decay of another.
The daughter may itself be unstable and decay again along the chain.
Dating a sample means comparing the surviving parent with its accumulated daughter.
Oppositeparent
Note
Nuclear physics casts decay as a family: the nuclide that decays is the parent, and what it turns into is its daughter. Along a decay chain, one daughter can become the parent of the next. The daughter builds up as the parent disappears, so the ratio between them in a sample is what radiometric dating reads. Used attributively, it gives the common phrase daughter nuclide.
- 7A familiar form of address to a girl or woman from an older or more authoritative person.
"Rest now, daughter," the abbess told the novice.
"Sit down, daughter, and listen to your elders," the village headman said, and the young woman pressed her lips together.
UsageUsed directly without an article when addressing someone: Listen to me, daughter.
Similarchild
Oppositeson
- 8In syntax, a node of a parse tree that is immediately dominated by another.
More uses
- daughter cellone of the new cells made when a cell divides
Practice
Can you tell the meanings of daughter apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.
Origin
The word traces back to Proto-Indo-European *dʰugh₂tḗr and came down through Proto-Germanic and Proto-West Germanic into Old English as dohtor ("daughter"), then into Middle English as doghter.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- Daughter traces back to Proto-Indo-European *dʰugh₂tḗr through Proto-Germanic and Proto-West Germanic. en.wiktionary.org
- The Old English form was dohtor, meaning daughter. en.wiktionary.org
- Old English dohtor developed into Middle English doghter. en.wiktionary.org